Truth, Justice, and the American Way
by LaCasta
Summary: AU. Suppose that the Kents had put Clark in gov't hands? Usual disclaimer. Lana/Lex. CONCLUSION and final note.
1. Weapon

"What do you believe in?"  
"Truth, justice, and the American way."  
"How do you act on those beliefs?"  
"I do what my superior officers tell me to do, without question or hesitation."  
"Very good. Now, you are to go to Colorado and extinguish a forest fire that is encroaching upon an area we need to protect. Here's the location. If you need further direction when you get there or need to report anything unexpected, call this number. Do it without being seen."  
"Yes, sir."  
  
Clark was eight.  
  
***  
"What do you believe in?"  
"Truth, justice, and the American way."  
"How do you act on those beliefs?"  
"I do what my superior officers tell me to do, without question or hesitation."  
"Very good. There is a submarine of ours in difficulties. Here are the directions to your contact at the San Diego base. You are to bring the submarine to the surface. Better that you not be seen but if it is impossible to carry out your assignment and remain unseen, you may let that happen. Notify your contact in this event."  
"Yes, ma'am."  
  
Clark was sixteen.  
  
***  
"What do you believe in?"  
"Truth, justice, and the American way."  
"How do you act on those beliefs?"  
"I do what my superior officers tell me to do, without question or hesitation."  
"Very good. There is a man who represents a threat to the continued stability of his state government. He must be killed, following the standard procedures. Avoid being seen. If anybody does see you, you are to kill them as well. Notify me of this upon your return."  
"Yes, ma'am."  
  
Clark was eighteen.  
  
***  
A/N.  
  
This is just a vignette that popped into my head. No idea of it's just that or the start of a story. But I'm ::puts on very saccharine smile and sweet drawl:: sure that the *dear* Muse will let me know if she intends to deliver another installment. 


	2. Target

AN: Well, phooey. The moment I decide to myself that this really is a stand-alone, the Muse displays her sense of comic timing and drops a chapter right into my lap, like my cat horking up a hairball right into my shoe. Except without the gaack-gaack-ffffffgaKKK-hrrrrch noises. But I bet they both have the same expression. Smug. Very, very smug.  
  
And there's a pairing now.   
  
***  
Clark was able to make his way unseen into the ostentatious dwelling without being seen. He looked about with mixed relief that he wouldn't have to take any innocent lives and contempt at the kind of person who would willingly live in a place like this. A castle. Inappropriate to a democracy. Some people worked hard and became rich, which was the American way, but this was clearly meant to intimidate with lineage.  
  
He opened the office door and saw the man he was supposed to kill. He was surprised at how young he appeared--the photographs had made him look much older, but Clark surmised that he wasn't more than five or six years older than himself. He wasted no time in this reflection, but crossed the room in a blur and had the young man by the throat and pulled away from the phone. A quick scan showed that he was unarmed.  
  
He spoke, using the standard protocol that had been taught him. "If you inhale to call for help, I will kill you immediately. You represent too much of a threat to the people of this country, and I am here to stop you by killing you." He paused a moment to allow this to sink in, but to his surprise, the man seemed not only unafraid but unsurprised. "If you wish, you may have two minutes in which to pray, but I will not permit you to move."   
  
The man almost seemed to smirk. "Did my father send you?"  
  
Clark disliked this break from the expected, but answered. "No."  
  
"What are you?" The eyes were examining him, seemingly unconcerned with nothing other than that study.  
  
Clark decided to apply the formula given to him to respond to pleas. "You may have two minutes to pray, but if you do not wish to, you do not have to. I will kill you immediately. It will be painless."   
  
The lips crooked in another smile. "Consider knowledge my religion. Would you deny me the right to practice it?"  
  
The argument seemed frivolous, but unless they were a disguised attempt to escape, he was to honor varying practices. Clark nodded.  
  
"Are you human or a robot?"  
  
"Neither."  
  
"Then what are you?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"You move so quickly, how do you do it?"  
  
"I always have."  
  
"But how?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"How fast can you move?"  
  
"Approximately 750 miles an hour on the ground."  
  
"And...not on the ground?"   
  
"My fastest flying speed is still unclocked."  
  
The man shook his head. "You are amazing. But you don't know anything about yourself?"  
  
"I know what I need to know."  
  
An almost mocking tone. "And what is that?"  
  
"I know my duty, and how to carry it out."  
  
The man's voice changed to a throaty murmur. "You've never wanted to know anything more about yourself? About why you're so different? Where you come from? How you can look so normal and yet you're not? You've never wondered that?" Icy eyes seemed to glint at him, and for a moment, Clark had the sensation that it was this man, not he, who controlled the situation.   
  
It was unexpected. It terrified him. He remained silent, counting the few seconds left. Thirty...twenty nine...twenty-eight...  
  
The man's eyes finally shifted from his, and to an object on the desk. Clark turned his head to look, in case whatever it was presented a threat to his goal. He turned back angrily to the man and tightened his grip as he felt his target's neck move, and seized the object.  
  
It was nothing more than a picture. That was all right, then. Several of his targets had wished to look at those. He didn't know what impulse it was that drove him--when he returned to report, he would ask the counselor who debriefed him--but he turned it so that the target could look at it full on. Still more inexplicably, he asked his own first question.  
  
"Who is it?"  
  
The man's eyes were soft, now. "My mother."  
  
Clark looked at the smiling woman, with her red hair and fine-boned features. "She's beautiful," he said, and then realized he'd have to report this to his superior officer as well.   
  
The young man didn't look away from the photograph, but seemed to be waiting. Clark realized that he'd lost track of the time. Another error to report. He waited another fifteen seconds to be certain that he had allowed the target the fair amount of time, then turned, not releasing his grip, as the door opened. His failure would mean another victim. Finish, quickly, now. Kill this one, catch the other and kill whoever it was.   
  
He squeezed, hard, but just as he felt the throat under his hand begin to collapse, something struck him. Unable to believe what was happening, he felt his grip weaken and his hands fell to his sides. The target, gasping and choking, dropped to the ground, not yet dead. A young woman was pummeling him with all her strength, and he stumbled under the attack.   
  
"Let him go, let him go!" she screamed, and as he fell next to the target, she straddled his chest, pummeling him. Her long dark hair and rage-contorted face as she hurled her furious words and blows made her seem like some kind of witch-figure, he thought, as he felt his strength continue to weaken. The last thought in his mind was of how deeply he'd failed.  
  
***  
  
Lex Luthor had never expected to hear Lana Lang calling anybody a "bastard," let alone "a rotten mother-fucking no-good bastard," but that was the sound that greeted his return to consciousness. She was still hitting his assailant, who now seemed barely conscious, eyes closed, his only motions occasional flinches and winces that didn't even seem directly related to the blows.   
  
"Lana, it's okay," he tried to say, but what came out was more a movement from a symphony of scratchy sounds. He also wanted to ask her how she'd over-powered a super-humanly strong being, but that was more complicated.  
  
She hadn't even seen that he was conscious again, and since she couldn't hear the miniscule noises he could make, instead he buried his hand in her thick, glossy hair. The familiar sensation was apparently enough to get her attention.  
  
"Lex," she whispered, tears coming to her eyes, and she drew him close, starting a thorough kiss and then realizing he was in no condition to respond with his usual enthusiasm. "I was just bringing the Talon reports and saw..."  
  
He was able to talk, he realized, as his throat began to hurt rather than to feel as though it didn't exist, and immediately regretted saying what he did. "Your necklace. It's glowing." It was doing more than that, it seemed to be casting light. But still, what a thing for a boyfriend to say to the girlfriend who just saved his life. From a big scary non-robot non-human, probably twice her size and half-again her weight.   
  
She looked down at it. "It's never done that before...I wonder if it has something to do with..." She looked at the figure underneath her.  
  
"Let's see," he croaked. She let him take it off and he lightly touched the stone to his attacker's face. He immediately groaned, as if it hurt him. Touching him with the chain provoked no additional response.  
  
"Keep holding it there. No, better give it back to me. You call the police," she said.   
  
"No." God, talking hurt. He got to his feet, waited until the room seemed to steady itself again, and went to the desk, where he got a pen and paper. He scribbled. "No. I think he might be some experiment of Dad's. I'm going to get some more meteor fragments and lock him up with them, then see just why Dad sent me a new friend to play with."  
  
"But, Lex-"  
  
He continued to scribble. A way to interrupt without actually talking. "Besides, love, I want to find out what makes him tick. Or whatever he does."   
  
"I don't like it, Lex."  
  
"Come on." He tried to smile beguilingly at her. "I'll throw in a special tour of the dungeons!" he added, in what he hoped was a persuasive scrawl.  
  
She nodded, reluctantly. "But only if he stays under control."   
  
Lex thanked a God he was starting to believe in again that Enrique was either the least curious man in the world or the best able to disguise any hint of curiousity. His voice betrayed nothing when Lex picked up the house phone and told him to deliver all the pieces of meteor that Lex had found, duct tape, an ice pack, and the handcuffs from the back of the third dresser drawer, and leave them outside the office door. Lex wondered for a moment if his attacker wasn't the only non-human, when Enrique knocked, announced, "It's all ready, Mr. Luthor," and didn't even turn around when Lex opened the door.  
  
"I just hope he doesn't write speculations about our love life and post them to the Web somewhere," he thought to himself, as he handcuffed the prone figure, lifted his shirt, placed several pieces of meteor on his chest, and wound several layers of duct tape over them, then rolling him over to repeat the same process on the back. Then he put the ice pack on his neck, and nodded tiredly as Lana suggested that they rest a few minutes before locking "that" up. She accompanied the word with a kick.  
  
***  
A/N.  
Yes, Lana's a bit more aggressive here, but I think growing up without Clark around would make her a bit more independent. How she and Lex got together will come in the next chapter.  
  
Dammit, Muse, stop *snickering* like that. It's...it's ungracious, that's what it is! 


	3. Prison

AN: Well, finally!  
  
Crazy muse.  
  
***  
Lex was genuinely fascinated by the creature that had attacked him. It didn't hurt that the figure somehow seemed tied in with the meteors. It was a real nuisance that there wasn't any place in the factory labs where he could study him. Instead, he'd have to keep him locked up in the castle and figure out what he could improvise.   
  
If the attempt to kill him hadn't been quite so thorough, he'd have suspected it was another intellectual challenge his father was sending him. As it was, he couldn't rule out the possibility that it was a plain and simple challenge. At least, if Luthors ever did anything that was plain and simple.  
  
It took both him and Lana to haul the figure to its feet. Not that he was resisting, but rather, a genuine dead weight. Was there a possibility that if he failed in his mission he would self-destruct? He was fairly certain that his attacker was at least partially human--it would explain the "neither" to his question about whether he was human or robotic and he appeared to be sweating and in genuine pain.   
  
"Lex, are you sure that you just don't want to call the police?" Lana had interpreted his contemplation as reconsidering.  
  
He shook his head, which he found wasn't appreciably better for his throat than speaking, and led the way out of the room.   
  
By the time that they got him downstairs, his attacker was showing even more signs of distress. If just the necklace was enough to knock him off balance, Lex wondered, perhaps the number of pieces that he'd put right against his skin was going to be literally overkill. He certainly didn't want that.   
  
Lana's eyes were widening as they entered the dungeon area, and Lex couldn't help smirking. "You could make a fortune renting this place out by the hour," she finally commented, taking in the atmosphere.  
  
"Talon 2?" It wasn't that the dungeon was equipped--far from it, the only furnishings were carved in the walls and the disconcertingly anachronistic electric lighting. It gave the dungeon an air of simple utility that was somehow more perturbing than if there had been manacles and racks and Iron Maidens scattered about. It had never bothered Lex before now.  
  
He wondered if it was Lana's presence. No, that wasn't it, though bemused, she was taking it in stride. He realized what it was. The resemblance to his unexpected visitor. No frills, nothing but his intent to kill, following whatever code it had been given.   
  
***  
  
Lana reminded herself that Lex's intense scientific scrutiny of whatever caught his interest was part of why she loved him. But like so many of those traits, it also made her want to shake him. He was looking at the man-thing-whatever that had tried to crush his throat as though it were a predicted earnings report. But then, maybe that's what he thought the thing was.  
  
He was even starting to unwind the duct tape and take away all but two of the meteor shards. "Lex."   
  
"I know what I'm doing," he croaked.  
  
"So do I. You're doing something incredibly dangerous. Now let's figure out who sent it and what it is and why, and then stop it." It was strange to be in a relationship with a hard-headed businessman and so often find herself being the practical one.   
  
"Okay." He gave her a look of overtly feigned meekness as he backed out of the cell where they'd put the attacker and tested the lock again. Again, a wave of exasperated tenderness came over her.   
  
"Upstairs." 


	4. Flawed

Lana disliked doing homework with Lex around. It reminded her too vividly of the gap between their ages and world experience. But she didn't want to leave him alone and the homework--as well as more of his incessant paperwork--had to get done, so she hauled out the books and stared blankly at them.  
  
She realized that at least she'd have an excuse the teachers hadn't heard before: A strange kind of super-creature tried to strangle my covert boyfriend and somehow my necklace stopped it, and so I wasn't able to concentrate, between making him drink hot tea with honey and thinking about things.  
  
On the other hand, as Chloe would remind her, this was Smallville. Maybe the same thing happened to Mr. Wallace just last week. Except for the boyfriend part, of course, it'd be "wife," instead.  
  
Which reminded her of other things, specifically, how Aunt Nell was taking the knowledge that her niece was semi-secretly dating Lex Luthor. The problem was that she was taking it all too well, and Lana could have sworn that Nell was already anticipating weddings and babies. "Don't make the mistake *I* made, Lana. You think that you can always come back and pick up the guy you left behind to see if there was something better, but you can't. And then you don't want to settle for anything but."   
  
She'd realized that she didn't want to settle for anything but Lex when she saw that...that...being crushing the life out of him. But in a strange way, the creature reminded her of Lex and herself.  
  
Perfection flawed. To everybody in Smallville, she was the perfect princess, pretty, polite, popular, and probably a lot of other words beginning with the same letter. Everybody knew of the tragedy, but that just made the inner wound visible. People saw the one sorrow and thought that that was all there could be, when she had so much else going for her. When she said something along those lines to Lex, he smiled and mentioned how when Navajos weave blankets, they deliberately leave in a flaw, so that the gods wouldn't think the weaver was usurping the divine right to creae perfection.  
  
It was what drew her to Lex. He was another one who looked to have everything anyone could ask for, the baldness being the one visible flaw. She wondered if, like her, he was teeming underneath with everything nobody ever suspected. Or would have allowed them to feel. Insecurity. Fear. Pain other than what they were supposed to feel.   
  
So the next time that he saw her and paid the standard attentions, the light compliments, she asked him if he was another person who's supposed to be perfect.  
  
It was the first time she'd seen him taken aback.  
  
But not the last.  
  
It had drifted into conversation, more coffee, more conversation, happening to be where the other one just might chance to be, and finally realizing that he was what she wanted. And she wouldn't settle for anything but him. She knew that for certain when she asked him to invest in the Talon, and he demanded a workable business plan first. He'd seen what she could be other than the princess.   
  
She hadn't told Whitney why she was breaking up with him, or rather, not the whole truth. Just that she realized that they weren't right for one another any more. He'd agreed much more readily than she'd anticipated, to the point where she was wondering if he was relieved. After all, he could hardly break up with perfection.   
  
The creature who'd tried to kill Lex was near-perfect, too. Just the one flaw, the weakness. Lex had said that he was amazingly strong and had spoken briefly of other abilities. And if she imagined him with normal skin, without the greenish tinge that Lex had said came on only in contact with the meteors, he'd have been handsome. No, gorgeous. In a disconcerting way. The body that looked like was made for killing and speed and everything else, but the soft, floppy hair and full lips looked just...ornamental.  
  
This wasn't getting homework done. And Lex was giving her that look of his, with the raised eyebrow, that said that he knew way too much about the situation and was way too amused by it.   
  
She slammed the history book shut. "Let's go see Maynard. I want to make sure he's still safely locked up before I go home."  
  
"Maynard?"  
  
"I decided to give him a name." 


	5. Failure

"I refuse to nearly have been killed by something named Maynard," Lex wrote, underlining the word "refuse" heavily.  
  
"Napoleon?"  
  
"Mmmm." Lex sounded non-commital.  
  
"Clodzilla."  
  
Lex snickered but shook his head. He paused, then wrote, triumphantly. "Bosch."  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Hieronymous Bosch. Great painter of very weird things." He rummaged on the bookshelves and pulled out a heavy folio of reproductions. Lana contemplated them in silence, turning the pages slowly and finally looking up.  
  
"Does Chloe Sullivan know about this?"  
  
He smirked. "Bosch, then?" he wrote, but she grabbed the pen before he could cross out "Maynard" from his previous note.  
  
"No. Maynard." She underlined the word from his first note.   
  
***  
  
Clark forced himself to keep thinking. His superiors had never told him what to do if he were captured. The idea had never entered his mind, either. Nor had the idea of pain and weakness--the most he'd ever experienced was discomfort, and that only twice. Underwater, once, when bringing equipment down for a survey, and the pressure had made him feel heavy and leaden, and another time when he had been retrieving intelligence materials from a bombed enemy position and he had caught a collapsing beam with his foot, striking the ankle bone, which ached for a few moments. But even if that had been pain as he was experiencing now, he would have accepted it as the price for doing what he believed in.  
  
This was the price of failure, instead.  
  
He must have done something wrong. He was invulnerable. His only weaknesses could come from within, which was why it was so important for him to do his duty, always.   
  
He'd failed.   
  
The target was still alive, he was a prisoner, and a helpless one at that.   
  
He jerked in surprise and lifted his head at a noise. The target and the young woman were outside the door, and he hadn't heard them coming. His senses were dulled, as well.  
  
If they had been taught duty correctly, then perhaps they would comprehend the necessity of releasing him. He didn't have ordinary authorization to bargain with a target--if the target was one allowed to bargain, he brought him or her back to the authorities--but this was an emergency.  
  
"You must let me go at once," he said, earnestly, trying to convince them not just with his words, but his voice and expression. "In return, I will explain to my superiors that you did so, and they will reconsider their evaluation of you as a threat to security and stability." He wasn't sure that he could promise this and be truthful, but he knew that they were men and women of integrity, who had devoted their lives to preserving what they all believed in.   
  
"Who *are* your superiors?" The man raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Those responsible for security and stability." That wasn't giving too much away.   
  
"Why did they send you to kill me?" Clark had already given the target all the answers he needed for this, so he was silent. "How do I threaten them?"  
  
"I wasn't given that information--it wasn't necessary. You must understand the necessity of releasing me. I've probably missed several important tasks already."   
  
"What have your other tasks been?"  
  
"You're not authorized to be told." He cringed at the almost sulky sound of his voice.   
  
The man shrugged, then turned to the woman. "I think we've both had it for today. I'll see what else I can figure out." They turned to go, and Clark had to stop himself from shouting for them to come back, since he was afraid that it might sound like a plea.   
  
***  
Lex thanked the heavens for turtleneck shirts the next morning. His throat was a mass of bruises which showed, all too clearly, the marks of a hand. When he got to the factory, he was also thankful for email, as he sent off a request to an old ally in the Competitive Intelligence division of LuthorCorp.  
  
He got his response within an hour.  
  
"Dear Lex,  
  
No, this isn't the oddest question I've ever received. It's not even in the top 100. Try harder.  
  
Philip"  
  
Printing out the sixty attached pages, he read them closely, with a deepening frown.  
  
***  
  
A/N: Thanks for the feedback!!! 


	6. Patterns

Lana practiced an expression of imperious certainty, knowing that she had had the best possible teacher in Lex. Either it worked, or Lex had instructed the security staff that she was to have the run of the castle, since they didn't even mention that Lex had left for the factory or ask why she was heading to the largely unused east wing.  
  
She just wanted to make sure that Maynard was still safely locked away. If Lex had only thought to call before leaving for work...she hadn't quite been able to bring herself to call, not wanting to come over as the possessive, demanding girlfriend that she feared he might suspect she could turn into. He never said anything direct, but she guessed that his old Metropolis girlfriends were a rapacious crew, emotionally as well as materially demanding. Sometimes she wondered if she should even think of defining herself as a "not them," if she shouldn't concentrate on being herself. But that, she thought wryly, would mean figuring out which aspects of Lana Lang were the real one, the true self, and which were a response to others' expectations.  
  
By the time those thoughts had run their accustomed course and arrived at their usual rueful "who knows" destination, she was down the stairs and cautiously slipping around the corner. Maynard was still sitting on the floor, though he'd drawn his knees up to his chest, his head bowed on top of them. Her mind rejected the first comparison, a statue; he was far too much a thing of flesh and blood for that. But his immobility reminded her of something...she just couldn't think what. Then she remembered. It was another photograph in the issue of Time that covered the meteor shower. A dog, half-spaniel, half-German shepherd, watching over his owner's body.   
  
She reminded herself that she hadn't come to offer the wretched would-be killer tea and sympathy, or a rawhide bone and sympathy, she'd come to make sure that he wasn't able to get out and hurt anyone. Specifically, that he wasn't able to hurt Lex. But as she shifted her backpack on her shoulder and headed back up the stairs, his helpless, resigned posture seemed as burnt on her eyes as an over-bright flare of light.  
  
***  
Lex's notes to himself were usually deliberately cryptic to anybody but him. But as he tried to fathom the pattern, they were cryptic even to him. The reports he'd gotten from Philip were a mix of the detailed and the vague, of the trivial and the vital. There was no single common denominator that he could see.  
  
He tried to Zen an approach. Perhaps the pattern was the lack of pattern? That thought didn't make him any more tranquil, any more one with the problem, or any closer to an answer, nor did he stop to look for harmony in the position of his pen when he threw it across the room.  
  
He looked again at his list of all the locations mentioned. While most of the events he'd asked Philip to dig up were located in the United States, there were enough in the rest of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa to make a solution based on that untenable. The same with the names. Most of the names belonged to the rich and powerful, but not all.   
  
He'd heard or read of only a small proportion of the incidents. Some of the deaths, in fact, he was positive he'd heard were officially solved or attributed to natural causes. Maybe that was the common demoninator. He checked a few online sources.   
  
That was the common denominator. Everything was either covered up to the general public, or never even made it into the press. Excited to at least be finding something out, he checked over the sources that Philip had given for each story he'd dug up. All of them were under-the-counter, illicitly copied databases, reports not known to exist, or otherwise secrets.  
  
Which meant that if he was going to get answers, his best chance would be to get them from May...from the killer. He knew enough to drop the "would-be." For somebody who looked to be about eighteen, he had more deaths to his credit than most entire military divisions.   
  
No wonder he'd been fretting about missing "important assignments." It's a big world, Lex thought grimly as he got up. Lots of people to kill.  
  
***  
Clark raised his eyes at the sound of a throat being cleared. He was too dizzy and weak to stand up, and he suspiciously eyed the target as the man opened the door.   
  
"You've got quite a history, don't you?" The man seemed to be speaking casually, as if making conversation. "Mostly murder and sabotage, but also the occasional rescue." Clark tried to ignore him. The target was only trying to taunt him. He'd never committed a murder in his life. 


	7. Past deeds

Lex refrained from snorting, instead raising an eyebrow. "Oh?" The silence continued. It was a trick he'd learned from his father--people dislike silence in conversations and will try to fill it, even giving away valuable information just to avoid feeling uncomfortable.  
  
However, while he could see that Maynard was uncomfortable, he could also see that his lips were clamped shut and he had an intransigibly stubborn expression on his face. After another moment, Lex's curiousity made him cave in. "So what would you have called it if you'd killed me, then?"  
  
"Defense," the boy muttered, then spoke more clearly. "You represent a threat to the stability of your state government. It has to be defended from people like you." An unspoken "dummy" hovered in the air.  
  
Lex realized that this could all too quickly deteriorate into an "am not-are so" match and changed tactics. "Louise Redden? Was she a threat to her state government?" She was the most recent death.  
  
"She was betraying defense secrets." Lex somehow doubted that an heiress known for her vast wealth and equally vast lack of intelligence or interest in anything beyond animal welfare and her wardrobe would have been able to take in anything complicated enough to constitute a defense secret. Unless somehow poodles were central to national security in a way that even his mind couldn't grasp. He was starting to lose his temper with the situation and with the killer.  
  
"She wouldn't have known a defense secret if it had paraded up and down with a sign and introduced itself as well. You killed her for some other reason."  
  
"Believe what you want. It's the truth."  
  
"William Putney? Don't tell me that his plans for cheap hydroelectric systems were a threat to the government or a state secret."  
  
The young man looked confused for a moment. "I don't remember him."  
  
"Last October. You threw him out a window, I believe."  
  
"Oh. He was threatening the life of an elected official."  
  
"The only thing that he was threatening was oil."  
  
"You're lying."   
  
Lex smiled. "Why would I lie to you? After all..." He let Maynard see that he was holding another meteor fragment. "I hold all the cards here."   
  
"No matter how much you torture me, I'm not going to betray this country." Lex felt a momentary admiration, not for the sentiment, but for the way he nearly kept his fear out of his voice and face. Somebody less cued to recognize tiny signals might have missed it entirely, but he saw the dread flicker quickly over his face.   
  
He crouched so that he could better see and be seen, willing even to lose the advantage that standing gave him in his need to know more. He made sure his own voice was assured, not showing his own inability to understand or his frustration. "This country? Do tell me how you serve it by killing off people who have nothing to do with politics or government. Population control?"  
  
"They were enemies of this country, and you are, too."   
  
Lex abruptly tired of the conversation, which seemed to dead-end at each path. "Take a look at this, then. See who your victims really were." He tossed the papers inside the cell and watched as Maynard reluctantly gathered them up and glanced at them. He'd leave the youngster with that and see what would happen.  
  
Before he was more than a few feet away, Maynard called, "What does 'vertebrae' mean?" He sounded out the word cautiously but more or less accurately.  
  
"Vertebrae? Bones that make up the spine."   
  
"What about 'inconclusive'?"   
  
"Something that's not positive." He frowned as he watched the young man, who was obviously reading quickly but at what Lex guessed was at most a sixth-grade level.   
  
"'Hypothesis'?"  
  
"A theory." He thought of simpler terms. "Something that you think explains something."  
  
Maynard looked up, as if studying Lex, and in a tone so grudging that Lex had to hide a laugh, said, "You must be very smart."  
  
He couldn't help a smirk. "Without a doubt, but those are words that a decently-educated high schooler would know, they're hardly technical terms."  
  
"Well, *I* never heard them before, and I've had *good* teachers."  
  
"I'd doubt that if I were you." Lex was starting to put the pieces together. A mind full of platitudes and rote statements, but kept deliberately ignorant...combined with that strength...but weakened by the meteors...what if somebody had realized a meteor freaks had real potential as a weapon? "Damn. I bet my father would wish he'd thought of that first," he said, under his breath.   
  
"Maynard," he said, levelly.  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"Isn't that your name?" He rather wished he had picked something else, but that sprang to mind first.   
  
"No, my name's Cl-" The boy raised his eyes from the papers he was still laboriously reading and glared. "You tried to trick me," he accused. Lex hid a grimace. The tiny moment of even just a fractional rapport was gone. But now he had more to go on. Including a hypothesis. 


	8. Intruder

There were plenty of police reports of missing or dead children between the ages of infancy and sixth grade in Smallville. But none of them were of a white male child with dark hair and gray-green eyes, let alone a child with a name beginning "Cl." Clarence? Clifford? Clem? Clint? Clayton? Clearance? Cleaver? Klepto? Or maybe he was Lana's friend Chloe's evil twin with the same name? Lex decided that perhaps he'd had enough coffee, especially since he was expecting Lana in an hour.   
  
He'd brought Maynard food earlier that afternoon and answered more questions about words and references. He'd only answered questions, not asking them, hoping to regain that moment of connection between them. Judging from the questions, Maynard was not stupid--he understood and applied new terms and concepts almost immediately--but was profoundly ignorant. Particularly, so it seemed, of politics and business. When he'd left again, Maynard had seemed subdued, almost despondent.  
  
Lana came in, her dark hair swinging behind her like a shadow that was a fraction out of sync with the rest of her. He was able to respond much more enthusiastically to her greeting kiss than he had in her last one. She smelled of coffee and cream, as well as the almond soap she used, a combination that was both tempting and wholesome.   
  
She perched on the edge of his desk and flashed a smile. "How's Maynard?"  
  
"I thought I was on the track of something, but it fizzled out completely. He's some kind of professional assassin and saboteur, but seems genuinely convinced that he's acting for the greater good. I'm even inclined to believe he thinks it."  
  
"So who's controlling him? And who sent him to get you? I don't think the Beanery is quite that sophisticated."  
  
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Bigger business. Starbucks. They know that I'm backing an ambitious coffee entrepreneur...No, I'd have found a carafe lid in my bed if it was Starbucks..." Even while she was laughing, he was becoming more sober. "God knows there are people who would break out the Veuve Cliquot if they saw my obituary, plenty more who would see it as giving my father a taste of his own medicine, but I've not been able to narrow it down. I had one lead, but it fizzled out."  
  
"What was that?"  
  
"I thought he had to be from Smallville and he inadvertantly gave me part of his name, but there weren't any missing people matching that description, let along the right start of the name. Assuming that his handlers didn't change his name."  
  
"Inadvertantly?"  
  
"Something like that." Another slight lift of the corner of his mouth.  
  
"So what's the part he gave you?"  
  
"Begins with 'Cl. But no record of any missing person with that name."  
  
Lana thought for a moment. "Doesn't ring any bells. I'll ask Nell, though. Casually." After another moment's thought, she added, "Cl'Maynard. Sounds kind of space alien to me."   
  
The house phone rang with two short buzzes.  
  
"Mr. Luthor? Roberts here. We found an intruder. An armed intruder."  
  
Lex was now convinced that he had seen everything. His own security staff, rather than a random staff member, Lana, or passer-by, had actually detected and blocked a threat to him. He was about to share this thought when he decided to wait until the intruder was identified and behind bars several zip codes away. His security could yet mess things up.  
  
***  
  
He'd put up a token argument about Lana coming with him to the security staff room, but knew the Jamaican bobsled's odds of winning were far better than his. But, like their efforts, his had to be made as well.  
  
If Cl'Maynard, as Lex now found himself thinking of the young man, was a poster boy for All-American Assassin, this one looked like as though a model for Accountant's Weekly had been outfitted by Soldier of Fortune. His weedy frame might have been unprepossessing, but the arsenal on the table was an impressive array. Lex caught the alert intelligence in the man's eye and decided underestimating him would be a grave mistake, perhaps literally.   
  
"Looking for someone?" Even in Smallville, home of mind-boggling coincidences, he couldn't believe that this new visitor wasn't connected to Cl'Maynard.   
  
"This is a dangerous situation you've gotten yourself into, Mr. Luthor."  
  
"Strange, I'm not the one in handcuffs here. You were trespassing and your little collection here suggests that it wasn't to leave a mint on everybody's pillow. Now what was it that you want?"  
  
The man remained silent. Lana said, quietly, "He could be a decoy. There might be others behind him, or maybe he's hiding something else."  
  
Lex leaned forward, his eyes only a few inches from the new stranger's. "Are you?" The man held his stony silence.  
  
Lex straightened up. "Roberts, you heard what Miss Lang said. Secure the grounds, add extra patrols. I'll pay triple overtime. Search this one again. Then I'll take care of him." A fierce elbow prompted him to rephrase, even though Luthors were not supposed to correct themselves in public. "We'll take care of him." Lana had already picked up the man's automatic and was looking at it with mingled alarm and bravado. 


	9. Lost

Lex tried to look as though he were pondering many and equally attractive options. He suspected that this man held the answers to at least some of his questions about Cl'Maynard, but it would be much more difficult to trick him. The comparison wasn't saying much, though--the youngster seemed gullible beyond Lex's own comprehension. But that comparison wasn't saying much, either.  
  
Roberts returned, by which time Lex had had a chance to strategize. After Roberts shook his head, indicating that they'd found nobody else, he had at least a semi-plan. "Keep an eye on him," he said, lightly, as if tossing off a conversational sally. "I've got a bit of a surprise planned."   
  
"So what's the surprise?" Lana asked, once they were outside, an eyebrow raised.   
  
"I don't know yet." He dialed Philip's number. "Philip? Lex."  
  
"Here's what I need. Any *un*official disappearances or deaths of a white male child, around the time of the meteor shower, most likely near the shower."  
  
"Of course I can narrow it down. The name probably begins with 'Cl.'"  
  
"But it should be some help."  
  
"An hour?"  
  
"I owe you."  
  
Turning to Lana, he smirked. "He said an hour, so he'll probably call in fifteen minutes. Showmanship."  
  
Her eyes gleamed as she looked up at him. "My turn," she said, grabbing the phone.  
  
"Chloe? Lana."  
  
"Got a really weird but important question for you."  
  
"Did anybody in Smallville have a child whose name began with 'Cl' or something like that? A boy, who's been missing now for a long time, or maybe dead."  
  
A long pause. "Chloe, what don't you have cross-referenced in that computer of yours?"  
  
"Ohhhh. That's the only one?"  
  
"Right after the meteor shower?"   
  
"Poor thing. How'd they take it?"  
  
"Yeah...I'd heard, but don't think I ever knew what his name was. They...never talked about him."  
  
"Listen, I promise, if I can, I'll tell you later, but for now, just keep it quiet, okay? This could be serious."  
  
"Sure, of course you'll get the exclusive."  
  
"Thanks again. Bye."  
  
Lana preened as she hung up. "The Kents adopted a son just after the shower, but he got sick and died in a Metropolis hospital two weeks later." She paused for dramatic effect. "His name was Clark. And if he'd lived, he'd have been my next-door neighbor."  
  
Lex's jaw rarely dropped--Luthors never show astonishment--but somehow, it didn't seem that important.  
  
"I don't know, Lex, I hate digging it all up again for them if he's not Clark." The first sentence came out slowly, but the second rushed out. "Or even worse, what if he is?" She stared at the table, not looking at him. "Lex, I know the Kents, they're good people. They keep to themselves, but they adore kids, and they were so good to me after...it must have been just after he died..."  
  
"Or were told he died. Or were paid to say he died." Lex wasn't even sure he'd said the words out loud, but Lana had heard him quite clearly.  
  
"They're not that kind of people! If they said that he's dead, then that's what they believed!" She dialed again, and glared as Lex put a hand on the receiver.   
  
"I'm not saying 'don't trust them.' I'm saying, 'Be careful.'" He lifted his hand as she gave him a quick smile and redialed.   
  
"Nell? Yeah, I'm at Lex's."  
  
"Sorry, don't mean to interrupt, but this is kind of urgent. Do you remember anything about the boy the Kents adopted?"  
  
"What about what he looked like? What color hair did he have?"  
  
"You're sure?"  
  
"Thanks. I'm not sure when I'll be back, but don't wait dinner, I'll grab something here."  
  
"Bye."  
  
She turned to Lex, eyes sober. "Clark had dark hair. She remembers it because it made it so clear that he was adopted. Mr Kent's blond and she's got light red hair."   
  
"That doesn't mean, necessarily, that he's the one." He spoke slowly, clearly wanting to leap to the conclusion. "But let's ask...Clark."   
  
The phone rang and Lex reached for it.  
  
"Yes, hello, Philip."  
  
"One child, hmmm? Named Clark Kent, by any chance?"  
  
"Never underestimate small-town grapevines." Lex wasn't even trying to keep the smugness out of his voice.  
  
"Anything else?"  
  
"Okay, if there aren't any formal records anywhere, how did you find out?"  
  
"No, I'm not asking to make you feel better."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Thanks. Take Sarah to dinner on me, okay? Anywhere."  
  
"Yes, anywhere in Europe, too."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
He was frowning, which Lana didn't quite understand until he said, softly, "They ordered a mail-order teddy bear with a t-shirt saying 'Clark' and a few days later, a 'Kent' Sharks shirt. Children's large. That makes it look as though they were planning to keep him."  
  
Lana swallowed hard. "Lex, they wouldn't have given him up if they'd known that he'd be turned into a killing machine, they just wouldn't have."  
  
"People can do odd things when faced with exceptional circumstances, Lana. Or exceptional inducements."  
  
"*Don't* retreat behind that worldly-wise, seen-it-all pose, Lex, it's nowhere near as sexy and sophisticated as you think!" She blinked in bewilderment at her own outburst.   
  
Lex crooked an eyebrow and picked up the phone again. "Enrique? Check to see if there are any photographs in back issues of the local newspaper, of a couple named Kent."  
  
"Way ahead of you, Lex. I might have something in my backpack." She laughed, "No, not that I expected that this morning, but we had a class project. Interview a local business owner. I couldn't do myself, and since the Kents were next door, I asked them. I took a couple of pictures with Chloe's digital camera, mostly of the farm, but there's one that shows them."   
  
***  
  
He was still sitting, leaning against the wall, head back and eyes closed. Lana wondered if he were asleep, or if he even slept.   
  
She'd have thought it would have been impossible to stop thinking of him as a killer and start seeing him as a victim. She wondered if the same thoughts were going through Lex's mind.  
  
"Clark?" She spoke much more gently than she had planned, but at his jerk of alarm, she was glad of it. He stared at her with wide eyes. "That is your name, isn't it?"  
  
The already-familiar stubborn expression seemed, while still genuine, to sit just on the surface, as though there were still more thoughts and emotions, not all of them compatible, roiling underneath.  
  
"Do you remember Jonathan and Martha Kent?"   
  
"Who are they? Did I...was I assigned to eliminate them?"   
  
"No. Is the name familiar?"  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"How about this?" She crouched to pass a printed copy of the photograph through the bars. He looked at it, at first suspiciously, and then urgently.  
  
"Who are they?" he demanded. "Who are they?" he repeated, this time, almost a note of fear in his voice.   
  
"You know them?" Lex's voice was level. "Answer me, Clark."  
  
Lana shook her head at Lex. She couldn't stop imagining Clark as a little boy in a Sharks shirt too big for him, playing on the Kent's porch, chasing the kittens in the barn, the way she had played there. It bothered her--to the point of being unbearable--that he was still handcuffed. She went to the table where Lex had put the key and opened the drawer.   
  
"Here, hold out your wrists, I want to take those off you." There was a flicker of annoyance in Lex's eyes, but she met his glance until a reluctant smile lifted the corner of his mouth and he nodded. Clark stayed where he was, after one tentative movement in her direction. Maybe he needed more step-by-step directions. "Come closer, Clark."  
  
"I can't. The rocks..." She'd almost forgotten the rocks firmly affixed to the bars. No wonder he was huddling back in the corner.   
  
She took a deep breath. "Unlock it, would you, Lex?"   
  
AN: For the sake of plot, I blithely decided that it would have taken the Kents more than two weeks to get adoption papers! 


	10. Alternatives

Clark had at least been able to recognize his previous sensations as pain. He wasn't afraid to identify that. But these sensations troubled him and he was afraid to name them. He definitely shouldn't have felt the way he did when one of the girl's hands brushed against him as she unlocked the handcuffs, that he wanted more of that touch. He knew he wasn't supposed to think about women. But her hand felt so cool and smooth and alive and if she had sat down in front of him, he could have looked at her for hours. He was supposed to be indifferent. It was his duty to kill her since she had seen him. Those were his direct orders.  
  
He followed her with his eyes as she want back to stand next to the target. He didn't understand why she had removed the handcuffs. He didn't understand why it was disturbing him so much that she had. It felt as though there was a huge wave flowing through his body, mixing everything up inside him, not letting anything rest for a moment, whether it was lapping or rushing. He felt desperately confused, and as they left, let his head rest again on his knees.   
  
"I want..." he whispered to himself, and didn't know how to finish the sentence.   
  
***  
  
"You saw how he reacted, Lex! He's got to be the boy the Kents adopted! Even if he didn't recognize them as his parents, he did recognize them."  
  
"I'm not denying that, Lana. But it doesn't change the situation."  
  
"So what can we do?"  
  
He sat down, heavily, and Lana realized then just how perturbed he was, that he'd lost his studied, habitual ease of motion. "There aren't that many options." He avoided looking at her.  
  
"Lex..."  
  
He still wouldn't meet her eyes. "I don't think that returning him to his handlers is one of them."  
  
"Of course not."  
  
"They know where to look for him, so we can hardly keep him here. There's nobody I'd trust with him. With that kind of potential power. Nobody."  
  
"We could let him go." There. She'd said it.  
  
"Is that something you're willing to risk both our lives for? And who knows how many other lives, if he voluntarily goes back to his handlers? Sooner or later, he would. If they took him when he was that young, he's known nothing but what they've taught him." This time, he did look her in the face. "Lana, you've lived in farm country all your life. There's only one thing to do with an animal that's turned vicious. It probably wasn't his choice any more than it was a rabid dog's choice." He looked away for a moment. "I rather wish that you hadn't named him."  
  
"Lex, his *parents* named him!"   
  
"But it has to be done. And his handlers will have to know that he's dead."   
  
Her mind was whirling. Everything he said made sense, but the conclusion was unbearable. She clutched at the weakness. "That probably won't even save your life. If they want you dead, and have the kinds of resources to-"  
  
"You're probably right. But it doesn't change what we have to do."  
  
"Say it, Lex. Say that you're going to kill a boy named Clark Kent."   
  
For a moment, his composure shook. "What kind of a person do you think I am, do you think that I want to?"   
  
"No." She hadn't realized how much hung on the answer until she saw the faint easing of the tension in the lines of his clenched throat. "No, I don't think that, Lex. But there's got to be some other solution." He shook his head, wearily.   
  
"There's not much time, Lana, before more people come after him."   
  
"I guess you're right. Can't fight facts." It was so easy to pretend, so automatic, that sometimes it alarmed her. She even managed a brave little smile. "But listen, Lex, I'm going to go down and talk to him for a bit."   
  
"I'm not sure that's a good idea."  
  
"No, not tell him he has twenty minutes and then you're going to come kill him, just...talk." Time to pull out the emotional card. "Everybody deserves somebody to remember them. Like my parents. Or your mother." She decided to use that as her exit line.   
  
Whitney had made Lana feel safe because he was standing between her and the world. With Lex, she'd felt an entirely different kind of safety, that she was definitely in the world but not alone, there was somebody at her side. Or sometimes, pushing her out to find her own strength.  
  
It felt strangely lonely.   
  
***  
  
Lex tried to think of it as a problem that needed to be solved. He was probably wearing some kind of body armor. A direct shot to the head, then. If possible, while the boy was looking in some other direction.   
  
He tried to convince himself that he was giving Lana time by waiting again and thinking things through again. The brandy decanter caught his eye. No, later. Afterwards.  
  
He didn't have a choice.  
  
He'd have to show the latest intruder the body and then find a way to dispose of it. Of him. That would be the easy part.   
  
"Life isn't fair, Lex," he heard his father's voice. "Do what's expedient."   
  
"Do what's right, Lex." That was his mother's voice. She almost never had to work to convince him to do something. Merely the look that said that she knew he'd do the right thing and be proud of him when he did.   
  
He got up slowly. Waiting wasn't doing anyone any favors.   
  
Walking down the stairs to the dungeon, he listened carefully, then shook his head ruefully. Yes, it was the sound of somebody sobbing. He nearly turned around to go back upstairs and let whatever happened happen. Let the tide of events carry out whatever it would. Instead, he continued down the stairs, resolving yet again that he would find out who created this situation and somebody would pay for it.   
  
He didn't believe his eyes when he opened the door. Clark was outside the cell, but sitting on the floor. His face was buried in one stranger's chest, that of a blond man, while another, a woman, was stroking his hair and shoulders. Lana stood to one side, and was the first to notice Lex's quiet entrance.   
  
"There *is* somebody who can be trusted with him, Lex," she said, intently scrutinizing his face. "His parents." 


	11. Deceptions

A/N: Sorry about the delay, for some reason, the Muse was holding back on me. (Given the Muse's usual tendencies, I probably should have had another week to recover from the shock!)  
  
***  
  
Lana's tears blurred her vision again as she watched Jonathan and Martha responding to Clark's desperate sobbing. His entire world had collapsed, she realized, with a pang of empathy so strong it came with a physical jolt. Lex's face was unreadable as he watched.   
  
"What do we do now, Lex?"  
  
That earned her a look so cold she involuntarily stepped away. "You didn't have that planned?" he asked, with an elaborately courteous intonation. "I'm surprised. To think that you went ahead and embroiled two more innocent people without even thinking what would happen next." He shook his head with a reprooving half-smile.  
  
"They're his *parents*, Lex, and they love him," she snapped back.  
  
"So I see." He turned slightly away from her. "Mr. and Mrs. Kent, I presume?" After a few moments, Martha seemed to realize that they'd been addressed, and looked up at him.   
  
"Yes," she answered, her attention still focused on Clark. Lana saw some emotion flash briefly over Lex's face, disappearing before she could even identify it.   
  
"Has Miss Lang explained the situation?"  
  
"To some extent," Martha answered, more of her attention now on him, her eyes cautious.   
  
"As one of his near-victims, I do take an interest. How did you come to give him to be trained as a superior hitman?"   
  
Her jaw tightened and the man looked up, as if sensing her distress made him realize they were no longer alone. Martha looked for all the world as if she were counting to ten before answering. "We...realized he was...different. Special. That extraordinary strength. We didn't know what to do, so we took him to the governor's office. We didn't know where else."  
  
The man added, "They assured us everything would be fine. They even suggested that we wait to come back to see him." His mouth twisted in disgust. "They said he was so affectionate that it would make it easier if he weren't confused by us coming and going. They promised to take good care of him. We even saw where they were housing him...they had pictures, and toys, and everything. We saw them hold him, play with him, treat him like a child should be treated. So we missed him, but knew that--*thought* that he was in the right hands." He paused. "Then they called, and said that was dead."  
  
"One of the staff had a young son with chicken pox. She must have been infectious and Clark's system couldn't fight it, they said. His immune system was different. He was dead after just a few hours. They even had a funeral. But now I'm not surprised that they didn't let us see...him, just the coffin. It was so little..." Lana had never imagined that Martha's tranquil voice could be so bitter. "They told him, after a while, that he didn't have parents." Her mouth twisted in fury. "The room, the cuddling, the toys, all that was a smokescreen. They never touched him or let him touch anyone. When Jonathan and I tried to hug him now, he was alarmed. Said he wasn't allowed to touch people or be touched, except if it was duty. It was one of his rules."   
  
Martha's and Jonathan's faces were open to the world, Lex's was still shuttered. "Then how?" he asked, gesturing to the very definite embrace that Clark was being held in.  
  
"Not until he recognized us. Then he first went back inside that cell. He was confused and frightened by his own parents!"   
  
"So you are his biological parents. I wondered."  
  
"No. We found him. After the meteor shower."  
  
Lana felt a stirring of relief as Lex's face mirrored, for an instant, what she knew was a revival of Lex's fascination with the meteor shower. "Did you ever find out who his biological parents were?"  
  
Martha opened her mouth to answer, but Jonathan cut her off quickly. "No."   
  
Lex's eyes flickered briefly, as if noting something and putting it aside for later consideration. Lana almost jumped as Clark, voice still ragged with tears, said, "They lied to me. They lied to you, too. And they...I didn't know what I was doing was wrong! I thought it was right!" Lana stepped away from Lex to crouch near him and touch his shoulder briefly.  
  
"How were you to know? It's not your fault, Clark. They used you."   
  
"But now, what can I do?" he whispered.   
  
"Clark!" a voice barked from the doorway. "Who are these people and what are they telling you?" Lex turned to see the man they had apprehended earlier standing there, free and armed. He rolled his eyes as some inner commentator chortled that true to form, his security staff seemed to be no more than a mild nuisance, if even that, to the various malefactors who seemed intent on infesting his life. 


	12. Demands

Lex winced inwardly as Clark lept to his feet and stood rigidly, as if at attention. Fortunately, the intruder was staring at Clark, not at him, so he was able to slip his hand closer to the gun hidden inside his jacket. Lana's well-intended interference and emotional judgements now meant that if he was lucky, he'd only have to kill Clark in front of his parents. If he was unlucky...  
  
The intruder barked again at Clark, "Why haven't you accomplished your responsibility?"   
  
Jonathan Kent's expression indicated that he'd shove a thousand tanks aside, if need be, to stand between the shamefaced Clark and his interrogator. "Who the hell are you and why are you giving my son orders?" Lex decided that yes, in fact, there was something scarier than a superhuman assassin with his hands around one's throat. However, the object of the infuriated farmer's wrath was either one of the most imperceptive or bravest man in the world, as he ignored him to address Clark again.  
  
"Clark. What do you believe in?"  
  
Martha put a protective hand on the boy's arm as he raised his eyes and answered, as if automatically, "Truth, justice, and the American way."  
  
"And how do you-"  
  
"So tell me the truth now!" All eyes turned to Clark at his outburst. "Are they my parents?"  
  
"Of course not. Clark, these people have been lying to you. They don't believe in what you and I believe in. How can you expect them to tell you the truth?"  
  
Clark lowered his eyes again. "I...sir, it feels like they're telling the truth."   
  
"Feels like!" The man snorted. "When were you told to obey feelings instead of orders?" As if it were a palpable flame, Lex felt Clark's momentary defiance waver and begin to die out, and his fingers wrapped around the gun as he waited for the moment to pull it out and fire. He had to manage to disable or kill Clark with one shot and just as quickly disable the other man. He let his eyes sweep the room once more, looking for the meteors. Lana must have disposed of them. *Thanks a lot,* he sent as a vengeful mental telegraph. *If I survive, remind me to repay the favor.*   
  
Martha Kent's voice was scalding with fury. "You told us he was dead. What was in that coffin, another little boy? You certainly don't have a problem with killing."   
  
She, too, was ignored. "I'm losing my patience with you, Clark." There was an ominous undercurrent as though some unspoken but potent threat passed from him to the boy. "Your mistake cost these additional people their lives. Though in fairness, people like that who do not tell the truth are no loss to this country. Now finish, Clark. I'll wait outside." Lex had to admire the gamble: The man was showing himself so certain in his authority that he didn't need to enforce it with his presence. The moment the stone door closed, he whipped out the gun and fired, a straight, clean shot to Clark's right temple. 


	13. Questions

Lex waited, heart pounding, stomach clenching with nausea, for Clark to fall, for himself to become, officially, a murderer, then, in the split second at realizing that he wouldn't, swept Lana behind himself. *Like that'd stop him,* his snide inner commentator remarked, but at least...Lana would know that she meant that much. In the same instant, he realized that Clark had shoved the Kents behind himself.  
  
The two stared at one another for an increasingly awkward moment.   
  
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Luthor?" Jonathan broke the silence with an enraged bellow, and this time, when Clark put out an arm, keeping the farmer behind him, Lex wasn't sure why.   
  
"Trying to make sure that at least some of us survive this," Lex snapped back. Both men again looked at Clark, who was looking perplexed and even sad. Lex decided that he could live with that, something he probably couldn't have accomplished with homicidal or determined.   
  
"I...I don't know what I was going to do," he muttered. Lex wished the light were better, since he couldn't really believe that the boy was blushing. "Nothing makes sense any more!" he burst out, bitterly. "I don't know who's lying and who's telling the truth and I..." His voice choked and swinging around, he grabbed Jonathan by the arm. "They said that you...that you gave me to them because you knew I had a duty to serve the country. And...they said that they gave you money for it, and you took it."  
  
Jonathan laughed, shortly, bitterly. "They said that we sold you to them? For one thing, giving you up was the hardest thing we'd ever done. And for another, all you'd have to do is look at the farm to see that we aren't exactly feeding the cows money because we've got too much to spend."   
  
"And you say that you didn't, and...that you loved me like parents...I just don't know who to believe!"  
  
"Believe your heart, Clark," Jonathan answered, steadily.  
  
"That doesn't help much." Lex blinked at Clark's tone. The killing machine was turning into a moody teenager in front of his eyes. "I've got to find out what's *really* happening." In a blur of motion, he was gone.   
  
They heard an angry voice shouting, from the other room, "Clark, come back!"   
  
"He's going to come back here once he realizes Clark isn't likely to obey him right now." Lex definitely felt more comfortable being in charge. "We'd better get out."   
  
"Going past him?" Lana asked, her eyes still skeptical.  
  
"No self-respecting dungeon lacks a secret exit." He just hoped, as he pressed the wall for the hidden latch, that he remembered where it was. Just as he was about to kick the wall in frustration, he found the right spot and a panel slid aside with the requisite creak. He stooped to enter and watched as Lana expertly herded the Kents inside, then helped him push the door back into place. Feeling as unlike Alexander the Great as he ever had, he ushered the oddly assorted group up the winding stone stairs. 


	14. Return

Clark stopped outside the nondescript building. Its artchitecture and materials, as well as its upkeep, were just a shade better than shabby, suggesting that inside were struggling businesses that couldn't afford better and didn't feel it necessary--or perhaps even possible--to create a sense of prosperity. It was a disguise to the outside world. For the first time, he looked at it wondering if it held secrets from him, too.  
  
As he slowly, almost reluctantly, entered, the previous events seemed unreal. Or distorted, as though he'd been looking at them through curved, clouded glass. The glowing rocks had to have been unsettling his mind as well as his body. Nothing else would explain the way he felt when he saw the photograph of those two people, as though he had realized he'd lost something that now meant more than the world to him. Or when they showed up in person, and he'd felt that the only safe refuge was in the arms they held out to him.   
  
Nothing else could explain that. He was doing the right thing, the American thing, and working for people who believed in what he believed in. He hadn't realized his head was lowered until he raised it.   
  
He'd tell them about the rocks that had stopped him and they'd discover a way to disable them. They were smart, smarter than the target.  
  
"Clark." The major stood up as he walked in. "We had to send Torini after you. Make your report, orally, to me. Omit nothing."  
  
"Sir." Now the words wouldn't come. "I...I located the target as described and was prepared to eliminate him. But..."  
  
"Yes?" The major's voice was impatient and Clark reproached himself. He should be able to explain.   
  
"A...a woman came in and she had some kind of...something that made me weak. I couldn't even stand, sir. She was wearing a rock as part of a necklace. It glowed green when it touched me. I don't know what it was or how it did it. They took me prisoner."   
  
"And?"   
  
Clark realized that he wanted to lie. If he told the truth, the woman and the two Kents, the people who said they were his parents and loved him, would be targets. They'd send somebody else to eliminate them, since he hadn't been able to. And the first target, too. Clark had expected him to be evil. Interfering with the government. Hurting American people. Instead, the target had been, well, kind wasn't the word, but...had treated him as an American treats a prisoner. Enemies torture their prisoners or let them die but the target had fed him, let him sleep, even talked to him.   
  
"And?" The major repeated himself angrily.  
  
"I...it's very blurry, sir." He wondered if his voice sounded as unsteady to the major as it did to him.   
  
The major continued to scrutinize him and then nodded. "Go to your quarters, Clark." Clark felt himself relax slightly at the normal tone. The major even smiled briefly at him as he added, "We'll get to the bottom of this and understand how and why it failed. Because it won't happen again."   
  
A/N: Sorry, this is another one where it's been forever before the Muse hit me with the idea brick again! 


	15. Carnage

At the head of the stairs, Lex stopped. "We need to find out," he paused for an instant, then continued. "We need to find out where Clark went, and what his handler is doing."  
  
Jonathan bristled at the term. "Luthor, he's not an animal, he doesn't have a handler."  
  
"You think they haven't been treating him like one?" Lex felt an unwelcome jolt of satisfaction as the farmer blenched. "Training him to kill on command, teaching him tricks?"  
  
"Lex!" Lana glared, eyes narrowed, their color intensifying like a light surrounded by darkness. What shook him wasn't that she'd been increasingly free in showing disapproval of things he said and did, but that a part of him was welcoming it.   
  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, I put that crudely." Jonathan nodded, only partially appeased. "I want to see what the security cameras caught of either of them."  
  
As he led the way to the monitoring room, he felt a strange tension enter his body, an atavistic part of his brain warning his senses to be on alert. Sneaking a sidelong glance at Lana, he saw his unease mirrored on her face and in the tautness of her body, as though it were poised to flee some danger the body recognized before the mind. Their eyes met and Jonathan, walking behind them, opened his mouth as Lana turned around.  
  
"You feel it, too. Something's wrong," she stated.   
  
"It smells wrong," the farmer muttered.   
  
Lex hadn't realized Jonathan had meant it literally and was unable to keep from sniffing the air. There was a faint whiff of wet, hot metal, suddenly raising a memory of a visit to a mint. There was also, as they stood still, a stillness that shouldn't have been there. There should have been the sounds of conversation, audible in the hallway, or even just the sounds of people moving about. There was nothing.  
  
Making himself anticipate the worst, Lex hurried to the door, the tang of metal seeming to pinch the insides of his nostrils with malicious, greedy fingers. Opening it, he saw a parody of the normal activities, one man sitting in front of a monitor, a woman with a paperback in her hand as she waited for her shift to begin, another man with a cup of coffee in front of him. Each one had been shot in the head and it was the thickening blood pooled beneath each that sent off the odor of the slaughterhouse.  
  
"God," Martha breathed, as she took in the scene.  
  
Jonathan took two steps to the phone, but as he lifted the receiver, she put a hand on his arm. "Stop. We can call the police later. But if we don't find out what's happened, where they've gone, we'll be stuck here while they investigate." He looked dubious, and she continued, more vehemently, "It won't make a difference to them," her gesture encompassing the corpses around them. "But it could make a difference to Clark." He nodded, slowly, and put it back down.   
  
Lana had tiptoed, as if thinking the noise of her footsteps could disturb the victims, to the monitor. The screen, divided into four squares, each showing a different part of the castle and grounds, showed a ludicrously tranquil scene in each. Lex crossed to join her. "There are eight cameras. Each one is taped to a different machine. I'm not sure which, don't think it matters."  
  
"These?" Jonathan squatted in front of a bank of recorders.   
  
"Rewind them. We'll see if they caught anything." He had to step so close to the man with the coffee that he almost murmured an apology. Well, perhaps he should, at that. Whoever he was, he hadn't really expected to be killed like this. For something that still made no sense. At least the eyes didn't accuse him. Instead, they seemed pensive, as if the man were pondering a question. *I hope you found the answer,* Lex thought, as he bent to assist Jonathan.  
  
By tacit agreement, each of them watched two monitors, fast-forwarding to save time. Martha was the first to exclaim, "Here's something." She slowed the tape to normal speed, and it showed the intruder using a cell phone to call someone, then leaving the castle.  
  
"Here's more," Jonathan said, tensely. "What's he doing? Picking up rocks?"   
  
"Meteors," Lana answered. 


	16. Trail

"They log license plates at the entrance," Lex muttered, picking up the phone. "If he hasn't..." When he stood like that, his forehead corrugated with worry and tension, he reminded Lana of his father, no matter how hard she tried to dismiss the thought. His eyes closed briefly. "No answer." She wasn't sure that he was seeing anything when he stared ahead. "It looks like he's killed more of my staff. Of *my* staff!" He spat the words. "People I should have protected."  
  
"Lex..." When he shook his head at her voice, it reminded her, uncomfortably, of a horse shaking off a fly.   
  
"I'll go out there. See if there are any records."  
  
"I'm coming with you." Lana was ready to protest at Jonathan's implicit assumption that she and Martha were to remain behind, but the older woman caught her eye with a shake of her head.  
  
"Right." Lex's movements were as crisp as his voice as he moved about the office. First, he opened what looked like a fuse box but instead revealed a safe. Quickly dialing the combination, he pulled out two more handguns. "Mrs. Kent, Lana, you take these. Lock yourselves in after we've gone. When we come back, we'll knock three times, then twice. Got that?"  
  
"Better plan. We'll go upstairs, somewhere where we can see you. If we see anything, we'll shoot." Martha scooped up one gun, handing the other to Lana. Lana eyed the other woman curiously. She'd never seen Martha's eyes other than amiable and warm, sometimes covertly amused. Now her expression was almost alien, as if stripped for action, all superfluities gone, readied for action.  
  
"Good. The front gallery. Lana, you know the way? We'll wait two minutes before leaving, give you time to get into position." Lana nodded, then, with one last look at the room, led Martha up the stairs as Jonathan and Lex walked to the front door of the castle.   
  
***  
"It's so dense, I can't even see them clearly," Lana said, with a sigh.   
  
Martha's face still held that readiness that had startled and alarmed Lana. "I doubt they'll run into trouble. He's probably long gone."  
  
"Then what?"  
  
"We get our son back." *The maternal instinct,* Lana thought to herself, then corrected the thought. It was more than instinct--there was a calculating intelligence there that made it all the more fearsome. "We had him for only a few days but saw how special he was. I'm not talking about his abilities. He was trusting and affectionate and laughing and happy and *good*. Turning him into *that* wasn't just wrong. It was blasphemy." It seemed as though only a small portion of her brain was given to the words, the rest still alert, scrutinizing as much as she could in the fog outside.  
  
"I think they're coming back." In a few moments, they heard the agreed-upon knocking pattern at the door and opened it.   
  
"We've got a license plate. It also had a rental sticker." Lex's eyes were bleak and Lana didn't have to ask what had happened to the security guard at the main gate. Her eyes started to fill as she wondered who it was. *God, I hope it's not the one who called me 'Lil Colt',* she thought, then angrily asked herself why that would be so much worse. Another person was dead, whether or not it was somebody who teased her because he'd known her since she was tiny. Lex seemed to notice and in a barely perceptible gesture, held his arm out, and she went to him, feeling his hand cold at her waist, even through the fabric of her shirt.  
  
"What now?"  
  
"We call the rental office. Find out who rented the car. If he took it to the airport, they might track which airline he used, if they took him from the lot to the terminal."  
  
"He's had a start on us," Jonathan muttered.  
  
The corner of Lex's mouth quirked. "Our first break. This fog, I doubt his flight will take off for a while." He went over the the phone and started dialing. 


	17. Pursuit

Listening to Lex get the information he needed was like seeing a Machiavellian prince in action, Lana decided. Bonhomie one moment, veiled threats the next, and then perhaps bribes or back to bonhomie. And each approach was an extreme, charm couldn't get more charming or threats more menacing. She concentrated on watching, not on the unease that had risen in her. She'd have expected to be repelled by seeing what happened when he fully exercised the power of his money and name, but she wasn't. He finally hung up and turned around.   
  
"He did go to the airport," he announced. "The van driver doesn't remember which airline, but they're all delayed with the weather. If we go to the airport, we can find his destination."  
  
"Then what?"   
  
"We can probably get there before he does, if we use the jet."  
  
Jonathan, who had been staring out the window, stood up. "And just what is your interest in our son?"  
  
Lex's face was expressionless. "He tried to kill me, Mr. Kent. If I find out who sent him, I'll be able to forestall any further attempts."  
  
"Is that your only interest?" Jonathan clearly wasn't ready to believe the answer.   
  
"Mr. Kent, we don't have time for this. We need to get to the airport. We can finish this on the way."  
  
"That's not quite enough. We're not going to help you find him if you're planning to use him for your own purposes. Or do anything else to hurt him."  
  
Lana could see that this stung Lex and that he was biting back the first response that came to his mind. Still, there was more than a hint of malice in his voice as he answered, "I don't think I *can* convince you. You'll just have to decide whom you trust *least*--me or them." Lana bit back her own angry response to the almost-taunting words when she saw the bleakness in his eyes and quietly moved to stand next to him. Shrugging angrily, Jonathan nodded and after a moment's silent appraisal, Martha rose and went to the door.  
  
***  
  
Clark had hoped that reading would calm him down, especially since all his books were about people who made the right decisions and did the right things. But he couldn't concentrate at all, not on the books or on his own thoughts. Now that he was back at headquarters, one thing was clear. He hadn't told his commanders everything. He wasn't supposed to make decisions without telling them, but he had. He had even deceived them. That was treason.  
  
Part of him shouted that he wasn't a traitor. He had tried to do the right thing at every step. But a louder voice kept repeating the facts. It wasn't his place to make decisions about targets or potential targets. It was his duty to tell his superiors everything and they would make the decisions. If he told them what happened and they judged that the target and witnesses still had to die, that was the right thing. Sometimes innocent people have to be sacrificed for the greater good. They told him that.   
  
Except. He couldn't stand the thought of anybody hurting the Kents or that beautiful girl who had eventually been so kind to him. He wanted to be back in the Kents' arms, where it had felt so strangely right and comforting, even while insecurity and doubt were still tearing him apart inside. He hadn't known what to think or do, but then they had taken him in their arms, and then he had believed them whole-heartedly. He shouldn't trust his feelings like that, though. And they were the ones who had given him to his commanders. Which meant that they trusted his commanders to do the right thing. Which should mean that his commanders would know that they were reliable, good Americans. But what they told him to dispose of them anyway? If the target was a big enough threat, they might.  
  
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, wishing that things would make sense again.  
  
***  
  
Martha had to pray that the man she was following hadn't paid enough attention to recognize her, or at least not with her hair and some of her face covered by her raincoat's hood. They had agreed to split up and use the cell phones Lex had bought and activated on the way to call the others if any of them saw him, but when she saw him talking on a phone, it was too good a chance to miss of finding out more.   
  
As she moved closer, she was thankful that the delays had made the airport crowded, but wished that he could be one of those people who shouts or over-enunciates when using a cell phone. But even though he was speaking impatiently, his voice was moderated and she could only make out a few words.  
  
"I was there, Bob, remember? I'm telling you, it's not worth it."  
  
"We turned a good profit on the deals, we refund this one, get out while we can."  
  
"Don't worry, I got plenty."  
  
Martha grimaced. He was speaking in guarded enough terms that she wasn't going to learn anything. Noting the rescheduled departure time--four hours--she went to call the others and find out just how Lex Luthor would get them to Baltimore ahead of their opponent. She suspected that it would involve so much money it would seem downright effortless. 


	18. Routines

As Martha had expected, it did seem effortless for Lex to charter a helicopter to a city that had clear weather, arrange for a jet to meet them there, and take them on to Baltimore. She almost tuned his voice out, her mind already racing to plan what to do when they arrived, but a sudden tension in his voice snapped her back to attention.  
  
"I don't think it's a good idea to bother my father about this." The relaxed, almost drawn-out pace with which he spoke didn't disguise the over-emphasis of most of the words, or the tightened grip on the phone as he returned it to his pocket.   
  
Martha frowned. For the first time, she wondered why Lex wasn't seeking his father's protection or even using LuthorCorp resources. It could speed things up immensely. "Why not?" she demanded.  
  
"Mrs. Kent, it's quite possible that he is behind this."  
  
"But you said Clark tried to kill you," Jonathan answered, suspicion clear in his voice.  
  
"He did. My father believes in frequent testing of my skills and intelligence." After a pause, he added, "And he believes in making the stakes something I care about."   
  
The four stood in silence until the helicopter landed on the tarmac.  
  
***  
  
Lana couldn't help but enjoy the helicopter ride, despite the noise and frequent bumpiness. The craft hadn't been designed to seat five but she certainly wasn't going to object to sitting on Lex's lap. His arms encircled her waist, hands meeting near hers, and she leaned back into the rhythmic movements of each breath he took. It was ridiculous to feel safe while in a helicopter on a foggy late afternoon and going to find a deadly efficient killing machine, against the forces of at least part of the government. But she did. She laughed a little at the thought and as if in response, he bent his lips to her hair, delicately nuzzling as if the sensation of each strand were slightly different and he wanted to give his attention to each. She felt the movement of his breath slow and then quicken as the cool, tiny whisper of his breath seemed to wander through her hair, exploring on its own volition.   
  
In the dim light, she could see only the elementary shapes of his hands, not the details of the joints. She traced a random path with a touch of one finger, barely skimming the surface. There were different textures there that her darkness-heightened perception found, the faintly pliable smoothness of the back, a slight roughening of the skin on the ridges of the knuckles, the tough smoothness of the nail. Letting her touch become imperious, commanding, she slipped her finger between the fingers, which tightened just enough to provide some resistance as she drew it back and forth, reminding her of the slight drag of a curry comb on a horse's flank.   
  
Leaning forward, he placed his mouth right at her ear, lips touching as lightly as the brush of fabric, and she could hear the intimate amusement in his voice as he murmured, "License my roving hands, and let them go/Before, behind, between, above, below."   
  
She lifted her head to rest below his chin and despite herself, gulped as she realized that while Martha Kent was staring at nothing, Jonathan Kent was staring with a disapproval that he wasn't bothering to hide. As much as she wanted to continue, it had a dampening effect.  
  
She wanted to tell him that this was exactly what drew her to Lex. Maybe it was growing up in a small town, maybe it was that famous picture, but for everybody in her life, she was always "Lana the Something." Lana the Cheerleader. Lana the Nice Girl. Lana the Quarterback's Girlfriend. And of course, Lana the Fairy Princess. It was as though their expectations somehow diluted her, drained a little more of whatever it was at her core, her essence, replacing it with the tepid water of categories and slots.   
  
Lex didn't expect anything of her, or if he did, he kept it to himself. Instead, he observed her, explored her and her reactions, contemplated her, with an eye that was both clinical and affectionate. If it meant that occasionally he seemed detached, well, sometimes that was better than having others' ideas and conceptions draped over her like Hawaiian leis. As fragrant as they were, there were just too many of them and she couldn't move without being afraid of ripping even a petal. Sometimes she even thought the scent was embalming her.   
  
She stared directly at Jonathan, slowly lowered her glance to her hands entwined in Lex's, then raised her eyes again in a deliberate declaration. He was the first to look away.  
  
***  
  
Clark rolled over at the sound of the alarm to look at the clock, thinking it couldn't possibly be time to get up yet. But the display clearly read 6:30. Almost feeling as though he hadn't slept at all, he showered and dressed quickly, then checked the voice mail system that would tell him what his assignments were for the day and who to report to during the day.  
  
There was no message there. He disconnected and entered his code again. Something had to be wrong with the system. Even on the days when he didn't have any external assignments, he'd still have responsibilities or lessons.   
  
Usually he reported to the first person at 7:30. He didn't want to leave in case the message did come, so decided to wait and eat breakfast. By that time, the system would be fixed or somebody would come to tell him what to do. He took a box of cereal from the cupboard, got milk from the mini-refrigerator, and sat to eat. He made himself eat slowly, so that it would be more likely to work or that somebody would come by the time he finished. He carefully washed the bowl and spoon, then picked up the receiver again and dialed.  
  
Still nothing. 


	19. Anticipation

When he got impatient, Clark reminded himself, he could do things wrong. He was trusted with so many important assignments that he couldn't allow that. But something inside him was not just impatient but worried. It reminded him of the time when he was assigned to bring a little boy who had been abused to his superiors, so they could protect him. He hadn't seen any bruises or marks of abuse on the boy, which meant that the people who hurt him were very clever. When Clark brought the child back, he was shaking and whimpering, even though Clark had assured him that he was safe now. Clark felt as though something inside him was shaking and whimpering like that.   
  
He was forbidden to go alone to any part of the building other than his own rooms. There might be secrets of state that he wasn't supposed to hear or see or he might interrupt something. This wasn't an emergency.   
  
He'd been determined not to watch the clock but couldn't help the occasional quick look or feeling disappointed at seeing that only five or ten minutes had passed since the last time. He was just taking another look when the door opened. He sprang to attention with such a profound sense of relief that it felt like his body had been filled with lead before and it was all dumped out now.  
  
"Ma'am."  
  
"Clark. There won't be any assignments for you today."  
  
"Y-yes, ma'am." It must be because he'd made so many mistakes on the last one. Or maybe they knew that part of him wanted to find the Kents. Find them and be with them. Wanted it like a dried plant wants water. He wondered how he'd be punished.   
  
"You're to stay here and read about World War Two."   
  
"Yes, ma'am." He stood until she left and then went to the bookshelf and got his book. But his mind started wandering immediately and he turned the pages mechanically, without even being aware that he was doing it.  
  
***  
  
If she were ever to be as rich as Lex, Lana decided, she'd have somebody make an exact replica of the Baltimore airport just so that she could burn it down. She wouldn't exactly be able to explain why but it seemed like definitely a reasonable idea to her.   
  
She also very fervently hoped that at the very least, the man they were chasing was on a plane, on the runway, surrounded by crying babies. And in the middle seat, too. They'd arrived well ahead of his plane, despite having to fly around the storm and fog, and now all there was to do was wait. And wait. And wait.   
  
Lex was off getting rental cars. She did laugh to herself a bit at the thought of Lex in some Buick or Honda. Or a Volkswagen. Definitely a Volkswagen. Jonathan was waiting at the public transportation, though they guessed that he'd either drive or be picked up.   
  
Well, at least the ticket she was holding was to Trenton, New Jersey. Since they needed to get tickets in order to enter the actual terminals, Lex had bought four, all different destinations, and she was half expecting them to be places like Bangkok, Paris, Venice, or Shanghai, just because he could. Instead, he'd picked local destinations.   
  
She and Martha had carefully picked seats far apart and facing away from each other, so they wouldn't give any impression of being together. She kept telling herself to relax, it's not as though he could arrive any sooner than his flight, and it was still another hour.   
  
She'd switched from coffee to juice but not soon enough, it seemed, judging from what her body was ordering her to do. When she went into the restroom, Martha Kent was just coming out. Martha gave her the polite smile one does when making eye contact with a stranger, but the contact was enough to make Lana chide herself. If she was bored out of her skull and kind of worried and scared, Martha must be going through absolute misery. Finding out that the child she would have raised as her own son, whom she'd mourned as dead, had been turned into a murder machine. Brainwashed and exploited. She couldn't have known this would happen when she and Jonathan gave the boy up, thinking it was for his safety and happiness, but she must be blaming herself. She had a tendency to do that anyway, from Lana's experience with her, and this was huge. She wouldn't just blame herself for whatever Clark himself had gone through, but everything that he'd done in his ignorance. She couldn't have known, but the habit of blaming oneself isn't stopped by logic. Especially when one wants a situation to be somebody's fault, even one's own, rather than be governed just by chance or fate.   
  
Her cell phone purred in her pocket. "Hello?"  
  
"Lana." It was Lex. "I've got two cars. One of them is a grey Honda. There's a valet waiting with it just outside the gate. I'm in the other one, at the parking lot exit, in case he brought his own car. If you don't pick him up on the way out, I might. Can you go to the rental office? Hang around, if anybody asks, say that you're waiting for someone. When you see what he's got, call."  
  
"Got it." She had to ask. "Are you enjoying this? Because it sounds like you are."  
  
He laughed softly. "Parts of it. Catch you soon, sweeting." Trust Lex to mix contemporary expressions and Shakespearian endearments and somehow make it sound sophisticated. That, and a few other related thoughts, kept her in a better humor until the plane landed and passengers started disembarking.   
  
At least he was easy to spot. Lana had had vague thoughts that he might somehow manage to change his entire appearance during the flight. As they'd planned, Martha looked at her watch, said, "Damn," and swung after him. Lana waited a few moments, then looked at the nearby juice bar, at her watch, back at the bar, and followed as well.  
  
When it was clear that he was heading to the parking lot, Lana called Jonathan to come with them. He was out of breath when he caught up to her, but nobody seemed to pay any attention, and Clark's handler was in sight but far enough ahead of them that she could at least make quick eye contact. He still looked angry and worried and like a man who intended to do something about it.   
  
She hoped that determination, planning, and obscene amounts of money would be enough. It would have to be. 


	20. Truth

Mental discipline was one thing that Lex carefully cultivated. He still wasn't able to keep his mind fully on watching for the man they were following. Even contemplating the possibilities that the boy assassin represented was enough to make his head spin. It only made it more exciting that he was ignorant of his origins and nature. If the Kents found him wandering about and he had those extraordinary capacities at a young age, he must have either been born like that or made that way fairly soon after birth. Where had he been before then? Who had created or engineered him? Were there more like him? How had he ended up in Smallville? Was he inherently intellectually limited, and if so, was that deliberate? What about the seeming emotional immaturity? How was it stunted like that--physiologically, psychologically, genetically? His muscles and skin had to be different from ordinary human tissue, what about the other organs? Could he be x-rayed? The questions about the boy himself were the compelling ones to Lex--while the question about why the boy had been sent to kill him was certainly important, it was nowhere near as fascinating.  
  
"Hello?" He hoped the phone had only rung twice before catching his attention.  
  
"Lex. He's gone past the shuttles to the rental cars and looks like he's headed to the long-term parking. Mrs. Kent's taken the other rental and she'll go there and circle like she's looking for a place. Mr. Kent and I are following him on foot."   
  
"It sounds like you're enjoying this, too, Lana."   
  
He heard her laugh. "I'm actually disappointed that he didn't take a cab. I wanted to get in the next one and say 'Follow that cab.'"  
  
"It's not over yet, you just might get your chance."   
  
"See you soon."   
  
Lex let the questions continue, but at least in the back of his thoughts. How was it that the meteors could half-kill him and a bullet to the head merely startle him? Why did they glow when he was around? What was the mutual chemical reaction? How old was he chronologically? Above all these questions rose the largest: Where would I find this out? And how?  
  
This time the call was from Mr. Kent. "He got into a blue Camry, license plate TR 0849. Martha's following him out the lot. Stay where you are, Lana and I will come find you."   
  
"Right. Wher-" All business, Mr. Kent, Lex thought as he was cut off. It seemed like an eternity between the time when the Camry left the parking lot, Martha three cars behind, and when Lana and Jonathan ran to the car.  
  
They scrambled in and Lex pulled out. The thing about these cars, he thought to himself, is that they just don't inspire exciting driving. It's like trying to present a peanut butter sandwich in the grand manner. You can do it if you have to, but it just won't feel right and will make you feel ridiculous.   
  
***  
Clark finished his book, thinking, as he always did when reading about past wars, how much he wished he could have been there. He might have saved so many American lives. He checked the phone again, just in case there were any further instructions. Not knowing what to do next made him uncomfortable, as if his skin didn't fit any longer or there were suddenly somebody else's hands at the end of his arms. When one of his officers came in, Clark felt relief wash over him.   
  
"Come with me."  
  
"Yes, sir."   
  
He followed the officer into one of the meeting rooms. Many of his superiors, though not all, were sitting along a table, all facing him.  
  
"Sit down, Clark." It reminded him of pictures of a trial. In that case, everything was the way it should be, he reminded himself firmly. American trials are always just.   
  
"What do you believe in?"  
  
"Truth, justice, and the American way."  
  
"How do you act on those beliefs?"  
  
"I do what my superior officers tell me to do, without question or hesitation."  
  
"Tell me about telling the truth."  
  
"Only criminals and people who have something guilty to hide don't want the government to know the truth."   
  
"We're going to ask you questions, Clark, and you will answer them honestly and fully. Do you understand?"  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"What did the target say to you when you told him his sentence?"  
  
"He asked questions, sir, questions about me."  
  
"What were those questions?"  
  
"He asked, ma'am, if I was a robot or a human, and about my capabilities?"  
  
"Did you answer his questions?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am."  
  
"Why did you answer him, Clark?"  
  
"He told me that, I can't remember his words, sir, but that knowledge was his faith and so I let him have the two minutes." He lowered his eyes. Away from that room and the target's strange, troubling questions, it sounded as though he'd done something wrong.   
  
"Was that your only reason?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am, but-"  
  
"But? Answer completely."  
  
"Yes, ma'am. It felt strange. When he asked me questions."  
  
"What was it like?"  
  
"Like...like...like I was looking in a mirror and seeing my reflection doing things that I wasn't. Sir."   
  
He saw them look at one another and a few of them wrote something down.  
  
"Then what happened?"  
  
"The two minutes passed, maybe a bit longer, since I'd lost track of time, ma'am, and wanted to make sure that he had had the time the American government gave him. Then a girl came in and attacked me as I was strangling the target."  
  
"Go on."   
  
"Yes, sir. I don't know how to describe what it felt like. I was very weak and couldn't see properly and everything hurt. I-"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I thought that maybe I was dying, sir."  
  
"Then what happened?"  
  
"I think I lost consciousness, sir. I woke up locked in a jail cell."  
  
"A real jail cell or an unauthorized civilian one?"  
  
"I'm sorry, sir, an unauthorized civilian one."  
  
"And then?"  
  
"I still felt very weak and the pain was very bad, sir. This part I can't remember very clearly, sir, but one of them, the target or the girl, took away some of the green rocks and I felt stronger. The target questioned me but I didn't tell him anything."   
  
"Go on."  
  
"He brought me food, sir."  
  
"And you ate it?"  
  
"Yes, sir. I know now that I shouldn't have. I don't know how he knew about them but he gave me what looked like reports about some of my earlier assignments, ma'am." He looked down again at seeing the alarm this caused.  
  
"How did you respond?"  
  
"I didn't know all the words in the reports so I asked him what they meant. Then he left, sir."   
  
"And after that?"  
  
"I don't know how long, but I was alone for a while, sir. Then the girl came back in with two people." He drew a deep breath and continued quickly. "They said they were my parents."  
  
"They were lying, Clark."  
  
"Yes, ma'am."  
  
"Why are you looking upset?"   
  
"Because...because even though they were lying...I felt as though...as though things were right. I don't know how to say it, sir."  
  
"Were you touching them or letting them touch you?"  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"Were you upset? Unhappy?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am. They told me that I had killed innocent people."  
  
"Did you tell them they were lying?"  
  
Clark could barely whisper. "No, sir." 


	21. Condemnation

Clark expected the next question to be about the Kents. Instead, the general who had asked most of the questions said, "Torini, bring that bag in."   
  
He felt sick again, pain arcing through his body like electricity, as the general took the bag and poured the contents on the table in front of him. "Are these the same kind of rocks?"  
  
Clark couldn't talk, but managed a nod. There were even more than the target and the girl had and he hadn't even thought that pain like this existed. He wasn't even aware of moving but his chair tumbled to the side and he fell to the floor. It was only a few more inches distance between him and the rocks, but it was enough that he could raise a hand in a wordless plea. He knew that he deserved to be punished, punished severely, but this was more than he could endure without asking them to be merciful. American justice can be merciful, he remembered, trying to repeat the thought in his head.   
  
The pain faded slightly and he looked up. They were being merciful--they were putting some of the rocks back in the bag and putting them in a corner in the far end of the room. "Thank you," he whispered, his throat feeling as though it were beating like a heart and each beat hammered exposed nerves.   
  
The general ignored him, addressing the others. "Ladies, gentlemen, if you have no further questions, I suggest that we proceed." Clark watched muzzily as each wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it, and passed it to him. He read each and put it in one of two piles in front of him, one pile with just two slips, the other with the rest.  
  
"Thirteen votes say that he is now an overall liability, two that he is still an overall asset." He got up and Clark watched him fearfully. "I believe the majority decision is wise. While he has brought each of us a fortune, and while some of us have, to a small extent, grown attached to him, he now represents a danger, one which we finally know how to remove." His lips parted and he hesitated, then said, firmly, "Mr. Spencer, Ms. Williams?" A man and a woman rose. "Make it quick. I'll take the cadaver to Zurich for the auction and we'll divide the proceeds along the usual lines."  
  
Clark cringed as the two approached him while the others left, some taking an instant to look back at him with a trace of regret. The thought of death terrified him in a way he never would have expected. And why did the general talk about fortunes and an auction and proceeds? None of them talked about what was best for the country.   
  
Spencer looked uncertainly at Williams. "What do you think, make him swallow it?"   
  
"That'd be the first try." She scooped a piece into her hand. "Get him upright, please." Clark whimpered. Spencer had given him some of his first assignments and often congratulated him when they were done. The man moved behind him, grabbed his shoulders, and braced him up against the wall. When he tried to turn away, Williams said, almost gently, "Don't fight, child. It will just make things harder." With the tiny strength that was left, he clenched his teeth together and as she gripped his face to force his mouth open, tried again to turn. Even with the pain, the bewilderment, the betrayal, he didn't want to die. He didn't want to be a cadaver taken to Zurich and auctioned. Her fingers slipped on his sweat-moistened face and she grunted, impatiently.   
  
"Try bracing him against yourself. I can't get leverage from this angle." Spencer changed his stance and without the wall as support, Clark felt himself flopping like a broken limb. He tried to grab her arm in a last plea but was unable to move even his own hands. She was prying his jaw open and then, using a meteor instead of her fingers, shoved it between his lips. As the rock touched the sensitive gums, he was unable to prevent a scream. Her hand moving almost as fast as his had, she jammed another meteor in his mouth, then as implacably as she had opened his mouth, held it shut.   
  
"Just swallow it, child, it will finish faster," she urged, almost gently. "There. You're going to be good, aren't you?" With one hand, she rubbed his throat, and he fought the instinct to swallow, to let the muscles follow the motion. "You're going to be good, do what you're told like you always have for us, aren't you?" she crooned. Her voice was so soothing, like cool water running over burnt flesh, that part of him wanted to be obedient, to be good, and to do what he was told. He always had, until now, hadn't he? In that instant, her hair seemed to change from blond to red, parted at the side and falling a bit past her chin. Surrendering, he tried to swallow, but now his muscles wouldn't obey him even in that. He met her eyes once more, trying to convey that he had yielded, that he was obeying orders again, but his body was betraying him. She seemed to understand. "There. Just open." He wasn't able to open his mouth more than a tiny bit, but it was enough for her to slip a finger in, lever it further open, and push a rock onto his tongue and to the back of his throat. The pain made him whimper again but he was going to be strong. He was going to be good. She picked up another rock and Clark heard a clamor that he thought was just in his head until he saw them start at the noise. Smoke drifted in from the corridor and Spencer began to cough, followed shortly by Williams.   
  
"Got to...get out of here..." she choked.   
  
"What about him?"   
  
"Leave him. If the greenies don't kill him, whatever this is will," she gasped, a few words at a time. Crouching low, they left the room and Clark, released, felt, with no awareness of having fallen, the tough carpet against his face. The rocks slipped out of his open mouth but now he didn't have to do anything. He could be good and dutiful just by waiting there. That was almost easy.   
  
***  
  
"Mad scientist," Lana laughed, more than a little nervously as Lex, frowning in concentration, lined up the last of the projectiles, as they crouched in nearby shrubbery. She'd taken it in stride when, after watching the man they were pursuing go into what looked like an ordinary five-floor commercial building, he said, as though it were obvious to anyone, that what they needed was to lob in smoke bombs, sulfur, and anything that would break and release flour into the air. It made sense--that would clear the building and cause probably moderate panic, which would let them get in and search. It had been disconcerting when Jonathan interjected that they'd passed a gun shop, and Lex nodded, saying that most of what they'd need they could find there. He'd bought nearly everything on hand, from axes to riot gear to gas masks. She was alarmed as Lex, aided by Jonathan, quickly constructed what looked like a miniature rocket launcher. What scared her, though, was when she asked if the angle wasn't too high and Lex looked at the building, at the launcher again, and lowered it accordingly. Jonathan and Martha helped one another put on the gas masks and other gear, and Lana nodded that they looked quite authentic, then Martha helped her and Lex put gear on, though Lex left the gas mask on the ground, claiming it would obstruct his vision.   
  
Lex checked it over once more and then, looking far more gleeful than Lana was quite ready for, started firing the improvised grenades through windows, following a downward slash from floor to floor. A few broke against the walls, but most crashed right through the windows, and smoke started to billow out.   
  
Jonathan and Martha ran to the doors, and after a moment's gesticulation at somebody who tried to stop them, continued in. Lex continued to fire and they watched for the man they'd followed to come out. If he came out sooner than most, they'd start with the lower floors first, if after most, the higher floors.   
  
He was in one of the last waves. Lex scooped up the mask and they ran for the doors. People made way for them and since there were still people leaving the building, they pounded up the stairs rather than be seen taking the elevator. Reaching the fourth floor, they separated, Lex taking one corridor, Lana the other.   
  
The first rooms seemed innocuous, a doctor's office, an accountant's, and a lawyer's. No hidden rooms, as far as she could tell, nothing suspicious. She had high hopes of one labeled "Importers" where there were dozens of sealed cardboard boxes, but after tearing one open, all she saw were dozens of hard-core pornography magazines. She ran to the next office, which she had to break open with the axe. Since it was a dentist's, she rather enjoyed it. But nothing there, either. The last office on the corridor was labeled "Gold exchange." The door was steel, rather than wood, and the glass looked thick. She swung her axe as hard as she could at the glass, gasping as the blow rebounded, painfully. Another three blows and there was a crack in the glass. Using the axe blade as a lever, she wedged it in the crack, then threw her weight against the handle. Enough of the glass came out that she could carefully enter. The first door on the inside that she tried was a closet. She'd gotten the right one, Clark's jacket was hanging neatly inside.   
  
"LEX!!!!!!!" she shouted, hoping it would be faster than using the phone. She opened the steel door but the figure pounding towards her wasn't Lex or one of the Kents. Okay, she could manage this one. Trying to hit just hard enough, she brought the blunt end of the axe handle down on his head. It worked. She decided she was becoming downright dangerous, with a good deal of pride.   
  
She bellowed for Lex again, before giving up and dialing. "Found the place. Last doors. I'm going in to look for him. Call the Kents."   
  
The office was a maze, she decided, angrily. Hearing motion behind her, she turned, raising her axe again. "I'm on your side," Lex said, mock-reproachfully. "Check this side," she ordered, turning the other way. She quickly scanned each room for either Clark or another doorway. She'd never have noticed a doorway in a drably carpeted storeroom if there hadn't been a crack showing, the door having been closed in too much haste, she guessed.   
  
Clark was lying, face down, against one of the walls, so motionless she was afraid that he was dead. There were green rocks scattered near him, and she gathered them up, tossing them into the outer office. She carefully lifted his head and saw that he was still breathing. There were more rocks underneath him and she threw those as far away as she could as well. His eyes opened and after several anxious moments, seemed to focus on her.   
  
"He's in here!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, and heard the pounding of approaching runners. Martha entered first, followed shortly by Jonathan. Lex stuck his head in. "He's all right?"  
  
"Going to be," Martha said, as she crouched next to Clark, who seemed to be regaining strength.   
  
"I'll get the files here." He disappeared again and Martha and Lana helped Clark to stand. Jonathan steadied him and supported him out of the room. Lex was smashing open cabinets and finding apparently very little, judging from the frustrated way he plunged at the next.   
  
"We don't need the damn files," Jonathan shouted.   
  
"Like hell we don't! You think he's going to know about himself?"   
  
"He's safe and that's the only thing that matters."   
  
Lex looked at him almost coldly. "That's what matters most to you." At the sound of sirens, the men dropped their glares and after one angry grimace, Lex picked up a laptop, seemingly on general principles more than a belief that it would have the answers, tucked it under one arm, and followed them out.   
  
Clark seemed to regain his strength the moment they were outside the office and away from the meteors. He looked bewildered, but took Martha's offered hand with a child-like trust that made Lana's throat tighten.   
  
They made their way out of the building without being stopped and ran to the parked cars. Martha helped Clark into the back seat of one, telling him to lie down and rest.   
  
"There's a professor at Cal Tech I'd trust with him. We can fly him right there."   
  
Jonathan fixed Lex with another glare and Lana, seeing the anger between them as if it were rising in palpable waves, said, irritably, "Shouldn't we get out of here first?"   
  
"She's right," Martha said quickly. "Not back to the airport."   
  
"There's a penthouse in DC. Shouldn't be more than two hours." Lex got into the car and waited for Lana to follow him. Jonathan tensely nodded and he and Martha got into the other, Jonathan getting into the back, gathering Clark's head onto his lap as Lana watched. 


	22. Exploration

Lex, Lana reflected, said things about being used to uncomfortable silences. She wondered if he had them broken down into sub-categories and if so, how he'd categorize this one. Or did he make up a whole new category: Silences When You're Wondering if the People Following You With Their Adopted Mutant Son Are Actually Going To Follow You to DC or If They're Going to Head for the Hills in a Car You Rented and You and Your Girlfriend Aren't Quite Sure What to Say About Anything That Just Happened.  
  
Lex was checking the rear-view mirror every few seconds. She selected the less subtle though less frequent strategy of craning her neck every few minutes to see whether the Kents were still following. Traffic was light and they seemed to be following close behind. Maybe she should go ahead and be direct about it. She fished out the piece of paper that had the various cell phone numbers on it and called Jonathan's.  
  
"Lana?"   
  
"How's he holding up?"  
  
"I think pretty numb right now."  
  
"I can imagine." Actually, she couldn't, but it seemed like she should say something.  
  
Lex's voice cut across the momentary silence. "Ask if they need to stop for anything. We'll be on the interstate soon."   
  
Jonathan must have heard, since Lana heard him asking, "Son, is there anything you want to stop for? If you want to get anything to eat or drink, or to get out of the car, now's a good time." She couldn't hear Clark's response but Jonathan's voice was raspy with weary tenderness and worry as he spoke to Lana again. "No, nothing."  
  
"Okay. Tell him-" She had no idea what should come next in that sentence. She looked for anything else to say. "Lex, what's the address, in case we get separated?"  
  
"18 West 22nd."  
  
She relayed that and despondently closed the phone, then rubbed her forehead. It had all been a lot to get through, she told herself. Plus she still hadn't figured out how to explain to Nell why she'd taken off the way she had. But then, probably the story would be one she could recycle if she ever took Creative Writing.  
  
Lex must have seen the gesture, since he lifted the hand that was resting on the shift and took hers.  
  
Maybe she'd just tell Nell that Lex took her off for an exciting weekend. She just wouldn't go into every single one of the details on what made it exciting.   
  
***  
  
Lex hated voice mail, answering machines, and anything of that nature. It was like opening a box and finding a description of the contents instead of the contents themselves. They also seemed to have inflections when they announced new messages, which they were emphatically not supposed to have. When they arrived at the penthouse, the red light on the machine seemed to have a reproachful note, as if saying, "I've waited and waited and you never came. No, I don't *mind,* not really. I'm sure you had better things to do." The phone number was very much unlisted and Lex very much disliked the implication that somebody knew he was headed here. He waved the Kents and Lana into the living room and entered the password.   
  
As the message started, he frowned. Lionel might let himself sound querulous and fretful in person but rarely in a message. "Lex? I'm having to leave this message in all the houses.I don't know why you weren't carrying your phone. Or even if you-" *So that the GPS couldn't find me, but never underestimate a controlling parent,* Lex answered mentally, wondering why the mounting near-panic. "This is important, son. Lock yourself in and don't go near any windows or let yourself be visible from outside. Don't let anybody in, particularly anybody who looks like a teenage boy. Something has happened at the Smallville mansion and I-" Now that was something. His father's voice was sounding almost ragged. "If, when you get this message, call me back."  
  
The big question was how much his father knew. He might be genuinely ignorant, knowing only that somebody had slaughtered the security staff and that Lex himself was missing. Or he might know...even more than Lex himself. Not that that would be too much. It wouldn't be the first time that one of his father's schemes included Lex in the near-casualties. He pondered the options. Ignore the call. Call back and play ignorant. Call back and bluff that he knew more than he did. That was his first choice, except for the annoying fact that he had any number of facts but almost no context.   
  
"Clark?" he called. "Would you come here a moment?" Clark approached tentatively, Jonathan and Martha vigilant a step behind, and Lex decided that nothing should make a creature like that seem so hesitant. A being with that boy's abilities should bestride the world like a Colossus...and he should stop the quoting to himself. He replayed the message. "Do you recognize that voice?"  
  
"No, sir."   
  
"Hadn't we established that my name is Lex?" he answered dryly and as Clark lowered his eyes at the rebuke, continued, more gently. "You're sure?"  
  
"No. I mean, yes, I'm sure, I don't recognize it." Lex nodded to himself. Whatever his minor homicidal flaws, Clark had been consistently and transparently truthful when asked a question. Aside from being convenient, it also made him want to get inside the boy's head even more. Had he been trained not to lie? Or even engineered so he couldn't? After all, given that his interactions with his victims had previously all been quite short, that might have been his handlers' choice. If so, then how? Clark's mind was in many ways a more tantalizing puzzle than his physical abilities, given the possibly thousands of layers of complexity.  
  
To understand that process, the results, to sift the secrets, to understand how each part fit together, reconstructing everything...and Clark seemed to have put them in the place of his handlers, judging by the way that he was now calling Lex "sir" and looking to the others for cues on how to respond. This was truly a new world to discover. To understand. The next words hovered at the back of his mind, barely articulated. To conquer.   
  
AN: I'm going to be out of town from about Friday until about the end of the month. I should have email but probably won't be able to post.  
  
And no, I have no idea where this is headed! 


	23. Understanding

Lex's mind was still too busy to sleep and at least for now, seemed to have the override veto over his body. He got out of bed, reached for his robe, and padded into the kitchen, for lack of a better destination. Or, he corrected himself, for lack of a better and ethical destination. The room where Lana slept offered definite attractions.   
  
He'd decided, and only occasionally regretted it, to wait for Lana to make the first move towards sleeping together. At least he was able to eroticize the waiting, turning it into anticipation and watching her advance towards it like an exploring kitten, wide-eyed and enticed but not quite ready to venture more than a few inches at a time.   
  
After rooting aimlessly in the cupboards, he decided on something his mother made for him when he couldn't sleep, milk with just enough tea to warm it and turn it a soft biscuit color and enough honey to make it not only sweet but leave a warmth in the throat. He rarely made it, not wanting to fade even a trace of the memory of her hands, the sound of her robe as it whispered with each movement she made. But tonight it was worth spilling a little of the essence. Wrapping his hands around the mug, he sat in the living room to drink, then noticed a pallid light from the room he'd put Clark in.   
  
Oh, good. Just as he'd stilled the questions and speculations in his mind, the thought of the boy made them pop right back up. Deciding that he might as well see if there were any answers to be found now, he put the mug down and walked quietly to the open door. The light wasn't turned on; instead, the city's lights filtered in dimly, enough for him to see the shape of Clark's silhouette.  
  
Lex's mind sifted through all the sculptors who might best capture his pose, the sense of physical immobility as Clark sat, upright and rigid, but the sense of powerful, agitated forces pouring through underneath, like water underneath ice. Rodin was too yielding, Michelangelo too fluid, classical sculptors too dramatic, Bernini too fleshy. Perhaps a sculptor of ancient Egypt could have captured it.   
  
"Clark." It was almost as though he had to call the restless mind back to its body, to give it a name.   
  
Clark jumped and then got up, coming towards Lex, eyes lowered. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was supposed to..." His voice trailed off.  
  
"Couldn't sleep?"   
  
"No. Do you want me to-" He looked briefly at Lex.   
  
Lex cut him off. "Are you up for some questions?"  
  
"A debriefing? Yes."   
  
He had to tread carefully here, try to lever Clark away from his past, tiny effort by tiny effort. "Not a debriefing," he assured Clark with a smile. "Just some questions. A talk." It was fascinating to see Clark digest the concept, he could imagine so clearly the way he was trying to process it. Not a debriefing, not a report, not being tested, not being taught. Just *talking*. Clark nodded and Lex led him to the living room. He sat on the leather sofa in a deliberately relaxed pose, legs tucked under himself, and waited until Clark sat and had shifted slightly.   
  
"You have extraordinary physical abilities, Clark. Do you have any unusual mental abilities? To read minds, or send your thoughts to another person?" He might as well get the wildest possibilities out of the way.  
  
"No." Clark looked at Lex again and added, "Not that I know of."   
  
Lex nodded. "Did you always have these abilities?"  
  
"I think I was always strong and fast but I wasn't always able to set things on fire or freeze things or fly."   
  
"When did you develop those?" *Don't ask how, not yet, don't ask enough that he gets skittish.*   
  
"I was able to look through things maybe four years ago, the other abilities since then."  
  
"Did you get stronger and faster over time?"  
  
"Not really. I mean, I did, but it was more...more like I was learning how to run better and there...there was more of me to be strong." He blinked as if the thoughts had come from nowhere. Lex could imagine that introspection wasn't encouraged.   
  
"So those abilities grew proportionately and your capacity to use them matured?" He amended this, "So they grew as you grew, at about the same rate and you learned how to use them better."  
  
"Yes, that's it." Clark's eyes showed a moment of eagerness. "That's it exactly."  
  
Now the question was whether the other abilities were innate or if they'd been added to him. "Did anything different happen before you developed the new abilities, like the one to see through things?" Clark looked away and Lex hesitated between sternness and coaxing, finally choosing the latter. "Was it something you didn't like?"   
  
"No," Clark responded after a while. "It was after...after I started liking to look at women. I...I wasn't supposed to."   
  
"That's all right. You weren't doing anything wrong." He let that thought settle, then continued. "What about burning things?"  
  
"That, too."   
  
The wretched thing was that the boy's timidity was making him, Lex Luthor, who had seen it all and participated in most, nervous. As nervous as if he were that age again, but with no worldly experience to make the changes make sense, or seeing it in other people near his own age, to fit into a context. He couldn't even bring himself to ask about Clark's puberty. For a scientific investigation, this was a pretty pathetic showing on his part.  
  
Aside from that, it looked like even answering the simply-put questions taxed Clark's resources. He got up. "Okay, that's enough for tonight." Glancing at his wristwatch, he corrected, "Or this morning." Clark also rose and started to return to his room. "Wait a moment, Clark." Lex picked up the mug, which he'd abandoned without drinking from, went into the kitchen, microwaved it for a few seconds, then handed it to the somewhat befuddled Clark. "This might help you sleep. It always worked for me."   
  
Clark looked at the mug, then at Lex, and to Lex's amazement, the hint of a smile appeared on his face. "Thanks."   
  
AN: Yes, yes, I'm going, the Muse just decided to drop a bunny in my lap mid-packing. Since I couldn't get its ears to fold under my suitcase zipper, I had to release it here. 


	24. Endgame

Lana had just finished brushing her hair when she heard angry voices. Lex was one of the shouters, and that meant, well, it meant that at least one piece of furniture was doomed. Jonathan Kent was the other, and while she hadn't seen him furious before, she could guess that meekness wasn't part of his usual response.  
  
"He is a danger, to himself and to everybody around him!" Lex was pacing angrily and Jonathan Kent was standing absolutely still. "In normal surroundings, he'd be a walking time bomb!"  
  
"He's capable of learning differently. He won't have to interact with anybody but Martha and me, until he's gotten adjusted."   
  
"And if they come after him? It's hardly the work of a genius to figure out that if he got out of the building, he'd likely go to you."   
  
"Are you saying I can't protect my family?"  
  
Lex's anger seemed to have gone beyond shouting. He turned and smiled thinly, mockingly. "If you hadn't been riding my coat tails, you wouldn't have seen him again." Jonathan seemed almost ready to choke and Lex continued in the silence. "In the Cal Tech labs, he'd be in good hands and under my protection. He'd be safe and *real* scientists would have access to him."   
  
"Handing him over to be studied worked so well the last time, is that it? Or is it that if they cashed in on him, you want to, too? It didn't take long for you to get greedy, too!"  
  
"Mr. Kent, I would not let anything harm him. My decisions about him have been sounder than yours, all things considered."   
  
Neither of the men had noticed Lana and seeing that they likely wouldn't respond to reason for quite a while, she went to look for Clark himself. He should have some voice in the matter, though she had to admit she shared Lex's doubts about his ability to cope with everyday life. But couldn't there be some compromise?   
  
After a few moment's exploration, she found Clark in his bedroom. She realized with a pang that he was huddled in on himself the way he had when he had first seen and remembered the Kents, but couldn't understand his own reactions, let alone the situation itself. It was easy, when he wasn't right there, to see him as a danger to be neutralized or a problem to be solved, but when she looked at him now, all she could see was a boy probably not that much older than herself, immensely powerful but at the same time, profoundly vulnerable. He looked up and saw her.  
  
"Hi," she said, then wondered how long she might have had to work to find a lamer thing to say. Following just her instinct, she sat on the bed near him. "How're you doing?" Immediately, she grumbled to herself that she'd found an answer to her own question about finding something lamer.   
  
She'd never seen a face so candid. He'd probably never been allowed to hide a single emotion or thought, and as clearly as if they were labeled, she watched confusion, fear, and misery each mold his expression. "I...I...they've taken everything that was inside me, and now...there's nothing," he said, haltingly, raising and lowering his eyes as if he were begging for understanding but unable to hope to find it. "I'm all...all empty."   
  
His hand under hers was warm and he stared at her with astonished gratitude. "It's only natural, Clark."  
  
"I don't...even if they...even if they were just using me, I...they were the only...they were the only *world* I had." He shook his head dismally. "It was a lie, but it was the lie I...it was truth to me for so long."  
  
Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered the huge vacuum her parents' death had left. Not just the lack of their presence, but of everything their presence brought, most of all, security. She, at least, had had Nell then, as well as fellow victims of the tragedy and people around her who cared. What he was going through made that seem miniscule, as trivial as a paper cut compared to an amputation. She struggled to find the types of words that had slowly helped her fill the void. "We'll help you, Clark. And your...your parents love you. They came all this way to find you and help you."  
  
He shook his head again. "No, they don't. They...they don't know me. They don't know all the things I did."  
  
"Clark, they weren't your fault! It would be like blaming a kid who was never taught to read for being illiterate! You did...well, you did things, but you didn't cause them."  
  
"Even if that's true, they still...they loved me when I...before I..."  
  
She couldn't help but reach to him then, and with the same abandon as when he finally sought the Kents' embrace, he almost seemed to throw himself into the tentative opening of her arms. "Shhhh...shhhh...you'll be all right...I promise...shhh...it won't happen again..." He pressed his face into her shoulder as if he were trying to hide, like a child, and she found herself alternating between stroking his hair and brushing it with her lips. As she moved her hand up and down his back, soothingly, she felt a moment of awareness of him as something far from a child, and felt her touch change, too, as the strokes of her hand changed into caresses and her lips became aware of the softness of his hair. He turned his face slightly as if he, too, had become aware of the change, and she tightened her hold, almost as uncertain as he about what was happening.  
  
****  
  
Lex ruefully wished that he could bottle whatever it was that had enabled Martha to make him and, he suspected, Jonathan as well, feel like they had been squabbling children. Probably it was the way she waited until they had both shouted themselves almost hoarse, and then spoken quietly and firmly. Clark was in no emotional condition to be examined or observed by anyone and they could surely keep him isolated someplace else, with them to watch over him and see when and how he'd be ready to return to the real world he'd known only for a few days. The idea of shutting him in another lab was inhuman, that of bringing him back to the farm as if he'd been on a long camping trip was dangerously naive.   
  
The phone buzzed the two quick rings indicating a call from the front desk. "Mr. Luthor, your father is here."   
  
Just when things seemed simpler. "Tell him I'll come down." He hung up quickly, just as the man started to answer, and strode to the door. "My father's coming. I'm going to head him off. I wouldn't trust him with Clark under any circumstances."   
  
The elevator had never seemed to take as long as it did then, even though it was the express for the top five floors. It took its time coming up, dawdled about opening and lingered while closing, then seemed to consider before beginning a leisurely journey back down. He hissed in frustration when he finally arrived and his father was nowhere in sight. "Mr. Luthor, he went up already, I tried to te--" Lex didn't even bother berating the doorman but stepped back into the elevator, pounding at the button.   
  
The tableau he saw as he re-entered the penthouse seemed as artificial and as exaggerated as the finale to a badly-acted play. Lionel was sprawled on the ground, eyes closed, bright red blood spreading from a gash on his forehead. Martha Kent was kneeling next to him while Jonathan Kent stood protectively in front of Clark. The boy looked stunned and Lana was holding his arm, comfortingly, the other arm wrapped about him.  
  
He felt himself freeze as though he were suddenly thrust into the play, then the inertia released his limbs. He almost stumbled as he crouched next to his father. It didn't look that bad, not really. He must have been knocked down against the corner of the glass table. Scalp cuts bleed easily, he knew that. Martha looked at him with horrified eyes and he tentatively reached to touch the injury.   
  
It felt like touching a cracked egg and feeling the membrane and shell collapse. With an inarticulate sound of protest, he shook the blood from his fingers and pressed them to Lionel's throat, then, not finding the pulse, his wrist. The only thing he felt was the pounding of his own heart, as if it were an animal throwing itself against the bars of a cage.  
  
"What happened?" he demanded. Loss gripped him with implacable hands.   
  
"It...Clark didn't know what he was doing. Your father startled him, scared him. He...Clark..."  
  
"Clark killed him." A strangely calm hate compressed all his other emotions, holding them down thrashing, powerlessly as he finished her sentence. "Very...convenient for Clark."   
  
"Lex!" That was Lana. Her voice and even her body seemed as distant as if he were peering through a telescope. Clark was gripping her arm like a drowning man would a lifeline.   
  
"Very convenient," he repeated, and felt as though everything about him, except for the motionless dead, was spinning away at impossible, vertiginous speeds.  
  
****  
  
AN:  
  
Uhm. The Muse all but smacked me when I tried a happy ending. I tried another and then she dragged me here.  
  
I guess this note is something of an apology, something of an expression of hope that not everything with the seeds of tragedy need become those tragedies, despite what seems to have permeated this story's ending.  
  
As Deanine commented, now would be a good time to feel as though the actions of a few corrupt but powerful individuals don't necessarily bring about more corruption and tragedy.  
  
I have the privilege of knowing and loving friends whose very lives are of service to the values of humanity and civilization, as well as the privilege of being able to work among those who have been given the opportunity to earn their living that way as well. But I know how circumstance has sheltered my life and how the same forces of circumstance--or sometimes heroic choice--has exposed so many others to unfathomable darkness in nearly every moment.   
  
While there might be good yet to emerge from today's tragedies, it takes hope to believe it to be possible, to be tangible, let alone to be inevitable, in the face of so much that defies humanity, the goodness that lies in so many faiths, and civilization itself. It takes even more hope, and more than hope, to fight for those causes at often tremendous cost.   
  
There are many who have entered or been thrust into the midst of the most profound darkness, wherever it may come, and with an even deeper courage, carried light with them. A light may illuminate darkness but no darkness can completely annihilate their light. 


End file.
